


Friends and Brothers

by BetweenTownleys, squidnapped



Category: Bully (Video Games)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Blowjobs galore, Child Abuse, Dumb Sad Teenagers, F/M, First Time, High School, M/M, Masturbation, Mental Health Issues, Pseudo-Incest, Rivalry, Underage Sex, blood ingestion, crushing human emotions, dubcon, im not crying youre crying, memories of childhood, unrequited petey/gary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-03-14 12:12:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 190,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3410186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BetweenTownleys/pseuds/BetweenTownleys, https://archiveofourown.org/users/squidnapped/pseuds/squidnapped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One year after Gary is sent to Happy Volts, he gets word that he's being released for a few days for a special occasion—his father's wedding. To Jimmy's mother.</p><p>(now with illustration! drawn by completehumantrash.tumblr.com)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rehearsal

 

 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

They had given him a day pass.

Leave it to the over-washed, unsympathetic, starched white collars Gary stared at on a daily basis to hand him the piece of paper like it was a Christmas present. When they weren’t forcing his arm down on a cold table to stab him with a needle, or sending orderlies to rip him off the fence as he tried to scale it during outdoor hour, they were giving him an endless lecture. _Why aren’t you taking the pills? Take the pills, Mr. Smith. Talk about your parents, Mr. Smith. Stop trying to set the nurse’s station on fire, Mr. Smith._ Their mouths moved, and yet no actual meaning ever seemed to be derivable from the content. Gary just stared at them, the wrinkles around their tight-lipped frowns gathering in a disapproving pucker _. Respect my position as your doctor, Mr. Smith. Stop answering questions with questions, Mr. Smith. Hold still, Mr. Smith. I can get them to strap you down like last time if you’d prefer that, Mr. Smith._ He liked to imagine what they might look like if their teeth could somehow get knocked out… how futile their inflated medical-school-educated sense of self-worth was, and how quickly it could drain away if they were only given a simple disability. Gary imagined taking things from the immovably omnipresent orderlies and doctors. Peace. Security. ( _Whole limbs.)_ He spent most of his time considering how their skin would grow cold and slimy when forced to sleep on a bed wet with mildew, rain and snow coming in through the bars on the windows every day of the year. How quickly someone could be forced to lose their mind when put under the proper pressure.

It had been on a Sunday. (Or had it? Was it Tuesday?) The doctor had frowned at his patient, who sat tracing the stark white paper in his hands from his seat on his cell cot. Gary remembered looking up at him and thinking that, somehow, it had to be a trap. That this was all part of a grander scheme meant to fuck completely with what was left of his sanity. A day pass. A day pass? Who was ever granted a day pass from purgatory?

The Doctor had only said “ _Congratulations_ ,” with a dead look in his eye and a dry handshake. 

The day pass, it seemed, was for a wedding rehearsal.  

The fact that the Smith family hadn’t entirely chosen to shirk off the knowledge that they had once given birth to a son was evident in what happened next. The unceremonious dumping of Gary’s person into a paid taxi outside took him quickly away from the insane asylum on the hill. The citizens of Bullworth Vale rumor-mongered that Happy Volts was a prison filled with aliens and werewolves. In fact, the real truth of it was much more frightening, but as the distance between boy and building grew farther, Gary looked back and felt for the first time why people were afraid to be institutionalized there, after a lifetime of convincing himself that he had never been afraid of anything at all. His fingers had found the lock on the back door, and he sat staring backward, repeatedly locking and unlocking it in systematic anxiety.  

Gary had been raised by a rapidly rotating door of nannies and outsiders as he grew up, so when the taxi rumbled down the winding Vale driveway to the Smith Family Mansion and he was greeted at the end by a row of dead-faced servants, it came as no surprise. He noted with dull interest as he rolled out of the car still in his filthy scrubs, that they didn’t speak to him directly, and avoided eye contact. A pre-warning, most likely from his grandfather. Gary could only imagine it. The mentally unstable male heir to Smith Enterprises enjoyed torturing small animals and pulling things slowly apart. He would trick you into losing your job before you knew he had done it. He was not to be addressed. He was a dangerous liability, but for an absurd reason that was beyond even Gary himself,  his presence was apparently required to maintain face in the community once in a blue moon. They washed him in silence, cut his hair back from a greasy tangle and into the pristine fade he preferred, and dressed him in the sharp black suit that had been meant for his graduation ceremony. Waste-not, want-not.

Rescued, dressed and clipped, Gary was finally beginning to enjoy the change of pace from listening to wailing patients plucking out their own eyebrows when the bomb finally dropped. Albeit accidentally.

On the desk of his father’s study sat a stack of wedding invitations. Gary had been perusing the dark room with a thought to purloin one of his father’s Cuban cigars when he had come upon them, a thoughtful finger dragging across wood and leather until it met a sharp edge.  

_‘The Smith Family Would Be Proud to Invite You To Attend The Joining In Matrimony of Mr. Warren Smith Jr. And Ms. Constance Hopkins!_

_Welcome With Us The Newest Members Of Our Family, Constance And Her Son, James._

_We Would Be Pleased To Accept You At The Church Of Saint Jude On The Third Of January At 3 O’Clock, Parking And Valet Service Will Be Made Available.’_

 

* * *

 

 

Gary arrived at Saint Jude for the rehearsal ceremony with both fists wrapped in bloody gauze. The mess he had made of his father’s study was frightening enough that three servants had thrown down their aprons and quit. The butler, Mr. Meadows, (a rather large man) had finally managed to sit on Gary until he stopped thrashing long enough to tape up his bloody hands. But the rest of the wait saw Gary locked in his room, with the staff picking shards of Mr. Smith’s antique greek pottery collection out of the ceiling panels. Gary heard nothing about the now piss-soaked invitations. Maybe that was for the better.

Seething rage might have been an improvement on Gary's condition that afternoon. Only a _Hopkins_ could be responsible for this. James and his _prostituting whore_ of a mother. Had she fucked her last husband to death _already_? Were those flapping lips waiting to _suck in_ another man and his fortune?? Where had the money gone before now? How many men _had_ she fucked? Had she shit out any other idiot gorilla children like Jimmy subsequently since the beginning of last year? Was she waiting to pop out a nauseating halfbreed between human and neanderthal now? Was _that_ why his father was forcing this aberration on their family? Could she even _make_ more children if her sand-filled reproductive organs were really _that_ wrung-out? How had she come to be here? _How_ had they _even met in the first place_? For what reason had his father even ~ _dreamed_ ~ of looking at a Hopkins romantically? It was nauseating at best. And chaos-inducing also at best.

The stone steps to Saint Jude were cold underneath him as Gary sat down to observe the cemetery in the afternoon air. The day was bright, despite his current mood (somewhere between blackout rage and incredulous disbelief) and the blue sky was stripped in the distance by long, cottony swathes of sheer cloud. Hundreds of chaotic thoughts hammered at full speed through Gary’s (now much more kempt) head, despite his outward facade. His right toe tapped a nervous rhythm even as he reached into his pocket and produced, at last, one Cuban cigar. It had been a much needed minor miracle to be left out of his grandfather's hawkish line of sight, having begged off with a bathroom excuse.   

In the distance, tombstones caught bright points of afternoon light, receding into the skyline. Gary saw them, and yet didn't see them at all. How could he even _begin_ to corral so many thoughts at once? he snarled at nothing and at everything, unaware of his own expression as he sat hunched into his own shadow. Nothing else mattered, except this moment. Unbidden, memories of the previous school year returned. Of all the ways he had tried to change things. Russel. Derby. Ernest. Johnny Vincent. Everything lead back to Jimmy. It _always had_. Jimmy's obscene assertion that he was, somehow, impossibly, better than Gary was. But Jimmy was a _disgrace_. Jimmy did and said things that were traitorous, and ugly, and idiotic, and for some reason, people _liked him_ for it. Jimmy’s slutty campus parade as he fraternized his way to the top with anything and everything with a pulse returned to throttle the point home; Hopkinses were _dirty, indiscriminate monsters._ And Jimmy would _be here,_ soon. Much sooner than Gary was prepared for. Involuntarily, the scars on his back twinged. They hadn’t seen each other since the night everything had changed. If only Jimmy had stayed down, bloody on the ground where he belonged! But he had risen again and again in an unrelenting tidal wave, his stupid, dense face _feeling heavy_ to look at, his thick, hammy fists hurting with a deep and resonant ache. He was a stupid sack of bricks. He was the bull in the china shop. He was a fucking unstoppable freight train, and it brought on in Gary a slow, fiery burn to _utterly destroy_ anything and _everything_ about Hopkins that had ever made him unique. Now more than ever. Especially considering out of all the names he had called James over the course of their relationship, _loser, idiot, moron_ , he never thought he would utter the one being forced on them today.  

_‘Brother’._

With an agitated flick of his wrist, Gary brought the cigar up to his lips and lit the tip. These were different bells now from the bell tower where they had fought. Soon wedding bells would ring and Gary would go back to his prison for the criminally insane, secure in the knowledge that everything he had left behind, his decimated empire at Bullworth,  his slandered reputation, wasn’t enough for Jimmy. It had to be _more_. He had to _take more_. Push father. It felt now as if James had to know that the last thing Gary possessed, his _name_ , had finally been destroyed. The very last remnant of a shattered existence. A Hopkins was a Hopkins was a Hopkins. 

All that was left of Gary's mangled desecration of a life was at last about to come crashing down around his ears... and all if it, thanks to one idiot mongoloid with red hair. Insufferable. Unacceptable. _Impossible_. It couldn't be allowed. Gary puffed on his cigar thoughtfully and began all at once to scheme a terrible revenge. Without much effort at all, the first whisper of an idea touched him, and faintly, Gary's mouth pulled up on one side into a menacing grin.

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

Jimmy's body was leaden in his cheap dormitory bed. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that he had to get up—it must have been late by now—but his body just wouldn't move. This wasn't his usual teenage body's hormonal malaise, either. This was corpse-like. With herculean effort he rolled onto his side, scowling, and cracked one eye open to check the time. His clock was missing. 

He propped himself up on one elbow and dragged one heavy hand over his face, trying to shake off the thick blanket of sleep still clinging to his skin. He slowly registered a faint tapping on his door, interspersed by Petey's anxious whisper.

"Jimmy, come on, you gotta get up!"

Blearily, Jimmy cast around the room and found the mangled form of his alarm clock wedged between his dresser and the wall. It blinked 11:57 at him despondently. He couldn't even remember throwing it. But for some reason seeing the time made something in his stomach sink. He'd missed first period, but that definitely wasn't it. It wasn't like him to oversleep, he was disturbingly regular, but it wasn't for love of class or anything. He skipped half the time anyway. No, it was something about today that he was forgetting. He sat up and rubbed his eyes to the increasing staccato of Petey's taps on the door, now almost like scratches.

"Petey, what gives? Come in, you weirdo."

"Oh thank god," Petey said, and slipped into the room. "I didn't think you were ever gonna wake up."

"Don't see how it's your business what time I wake up," Jimmy grouched. He felt mildly guilty about snapping at Petey, who only ever had his best interests in mind, but he was not in the mood. It didn't seem to phase Petey, who darted across to the window and looked outside.

"Listen, Angus is outside trying to distract her now but she's not having it. Come on, you've gotta get up, she's gonna kill you!"

"Petey, what are you—" Jimmy stopped mid-sentence as he remembered what it was he was supposed to do today, the sheer weight of which had kept his body glued to the bed for hours after his normal wakeup time.

Mom.

And with that thought she appeared in his doorway, as if merely by thinking about her Jimmy could summon her from whatever hellish plane of existence she usually inhabited. She gasped dramatically, one manicured hand held over her mouth.

"Jimmy Hopkins, get out of bed this minute! I told you I was coming to pick you up at noon! Thank goodness the ceremony isn't until three. You'll just have to skip lunch at this rate... who are you?"

Constance Hopkins paused her tirade to cast a skeptical eye on poor Petey.

"Oh, I-I'm Pete. P-Pete Kowalski. Um..." Petey looked terrified, his eyes darting back and forth between Jimmy and Constance, before Jimmy signaled to the door with a tilt of his head and mouthed "save yourself." Pete ducked his head and sprinted by her, down the hall. She frowned as she watched him go, then shrugged him off, returning to the business at hand. She swept over to the closet and began rifling through his hangers.

"Great to see you too, Mom," Jimmy said, pushing himself up out of bed. He padded over to stand beside her, arms crossed as she began yanking clothes out of the closet and onto the bed. "I've missed you too. I love all the letters you send me, and all the great input I had on your sudden decision to marry Mr. Smith, total stranger except for the fact that he's father to _the biggest psychopath I've ever known_."

She stopped there and shot him a glare over her shoulder before returning to her work. "Please, Jimmy, don't be so dramatic."

"I really loved the part where he sabotaged all my friendships and tried to kill me. That was super."

"I'm marrying Mr. Smith, Jimmy. It's not like I'm making you marry Gary. Anyway, he's in the asylum almost every day of the year."

Jimmy paused from half-heartedly pushing hangers around as he felt his heart sink into his stomach.

"Mom. What do you mean, _almost_ every day."

She rolled her eyes. "It's his father's wedding day, Jimmy. They gave him a day pass."

"I can't believe this!" Jimmy said, throwing up his hands. "You've moved from trying to murder me by neglect to actually actively trying to murder me!"

"Aha!" she said as she pulled his old Aquaberry vest from the recesses of his closet. He didn't even remember he had that anymore. "Finally, something nice enough to wear to the church. Here, put this on, and those slacks." She tossed the sweater onto his disbelieving face.

He continued scowling at her as he pulled it on over his head. "Care to refute the charges?"

"Jimmy, don't be an ass. I'm madly in love with Warren and we're getting married and that's that."

"Like you were madly in love with Stepdad Number 5? I can't even remember his name. When did you get divorced, anyway?"

"We aren't... technically," she said, as she suddenly became invested in picking an invisible piece of fuzz off of her lime green blazer. "But the papers are supposed to go through this week. That is NOT, by the way, information that I want to hear you spreading around today. You are not going to ruin this for me, Jimmy Hopkins."

"Yeah, yeah," Jimmy said, waving her off while he ran his belt through his slacks.

"I mean it! Warren is very rich and he can do right by us! He could even send you to college if you wanted."

Jimmy snorted. "Yeah, okay, 'college.' Boy, you sure know me well, Mom."

"Well, a car then!"

That perked him up. "I'm listening," he said, tying on one white sneaker.

Constance examined her nails, apparently debating with what she was going to say. She was looking less trashy than usual, Jimmy noticed—there was a distinct lack of animal print, for example—but she still looked like herself. She looked good. Healthy. Possibly, almost happy. Jimmy sighed heavily. Even before he listened to her bribe, he knew he was going to do whatever she asked. 

"If you behave today, and play nicely with Gary—no fights!—I will see what I can do about getting you a car. This is not a promise, mind you! A vehicle for a juvenile delinquent is always a hard sell, and while I have my charms," she smirked, running one matching lime green nail over the side of her breast while Jimmy gagged, "well, there are limits to everything."

"Alright, alright, I'll play the good son," he said. "Just don't do _that_ ever again."

She gave him a brief, rare smile, and Jimmy could see on her face for a moment just how tired she felt, and how anxious she was for this day to go well. He shoved his hands in his pockets, fighting off an ancient urge to hug her, or hold her hand.

"One condition, though," he said, grinning.

 

* * *

 

 

As the car came to a stop in front of Saint Jude, Jimmy brushed futilely at his coat and pants, trying to get rid of the crumbs. He'd managed to get his mom to swing by Mr. Huntingdon's burger joint for some lunch after all, as part of the deal. Suddenly the car door opened, and he was greeted with a white-gloved hand, apparently held out for him to take.

"Jesus. Are these people so rich, they can't even be bothered to stand on their own?" He muttered, half to himself and half to the valet, who just looked at him with vague panic. Jimmy pushed his hand aside and hauled himself out onto the curb.

The winter afternoon sun was beaming directly into his eyes, and as he lifted one hand to shade them he thought he caught a shadow lurking amongst the graves. He checked his watch—they still had a little under an hour before the rehearsal. One glance at his mom showed her flirting madly with a group of admirers, one of whom was likely his soon-to-be-stepfather. That would keep her busy, hopefully, and give him enough time to slip away. 

With one last look at the happy wedding party, Jimmy snuck across the churchyard toward the crop of weathered gravestones. As he pulled his collar tighter around his face, the thought occurred to him that this might be a terrible idea, to try and get this out of the way early. But Jimmy wasn't really the type to avoid conflict. And if there was going to be a fight, better not to get the blood all over the church.

 

**GARY  
**

 

The thing his hassled therapists kept trying to convince him of, kept repeating over and over again as if the exacerbating mantra could somehow penetrate his unbreakable shell, was that Gary was insane. They explained redundant concepts to him in small, simple words. He knew how to read, he understood the literature, but to them he had always been a dangerous, unpredictable child. They went through webster’s dictionary definitions, pulling huge medical tomes out and slamming them down on the desk to cite terms like _‘sociopathy_ ’ or ’ _Antisocial Personality Disorder_ ’. They wrote him prescriptions that did nothing, always circling back to the same prognosis that he was incurably demented. His own father had once even called him a malignant mistake. But listening and hearing were two different things entirely. Gary had spent a lifetime being accosted by the negative opinions of these so called medical ‘professionals’, and knew deep in his bones that they had always been wrong. At school he did his best to prove his superiority. Head boy, perfect grades, immaculate dress, extracurricular activities. Teachers always seemed to love him right before they hated him. But he wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t. Crazy. The answer was simple. He just… hated _everyone._ He had never in his life met a single person truly worthy of his valuable time and attention. And no amount of pills shoveled down his throat could wipe that disgusting reality clean from his permanently troubled mind.

And yet,  there were moments he still didn’t like to think of. Moments where he lost track of himself. Most times he convinced himself that they had never truly happened at all. Dominantly, they were moments of anxiety bubbling over, where a sudden unquenchable tremor for violence would make his hands tremble, and his feet shuffle in a perpetual motion machine of chemicals. He didn’t like idle time. It brought on a desire in him for chaos. He wanted to have his fingers in all the pots, a need for control and respect mingling dangerously with his sometimes extreme problem with authority. He wanted respect, DESERVED it even. He needed to take action to see those things happen, needed it to put the world back at its rightful angle. But Happy Volts had done the one thing he was entirely sure he didn’t need; it had given him countless days of idle time. They never _could_ fucking understand. Why couldn’t they see? Why did they hate him so entirely without ever really knowing him?  If Gary had had his way, he would have run Bullworth tighter than a battleship at war. He could have been a truly great king. 

Gary’s self-congratulatory theories at the moment, however, meant precisely dick. He knew he was the smartest person in the world, that wasn’t up for debate, in or out of the asylum. But his current predicament seemed once again to be how to best corral a herd of morons. Or, even more precisely, one moron in particular. King of the idiots, or some other pithy insult like that. Jimmy ‘shit-for-brains’ Hopkins had probably spent the morning shoving football players into lockers and sticking his dick in toilet tanks. Gary continued to sit on the church steps as he imagined the first half of Jimmy’s day, scoffing as his imaginings solidified as fact. Had he spent the night with that townie twat with the huge tits? Typical. If Eunace was any gauge for Jimmy’s taste, (or lack thereof?)  it was that he liked large things. Too bad he was too stupid for a napoleon complex but too short to meet a girl eye-to-eye.

In the distance, Gary watched the immediate wedding party arrive along the far side of the church. He saw his widowed aunts arrive together in a shuffle of over sized sun hats and handbags. The young man thought idly about what they would do if he threw their lapdogs down a well, and then stubbed out the cigar he had been half-heartedly smoking on the stone step beneath him. His family he could handle. They were prepared for him, and he was prepared for them. He had groomed his relatives into adopting a certain cold kind of distant familiarity that Gary liked. It meant they were slightly afraid of him, and therefore more malleable.

It really was that Jimmy was the only problem, then. The biggest short-statured problem of them all. Gary stood up, and took a moment to meticulously sweep the wrinkles out of his sharp black suit. Long fingers ghosted up to his thin tie to cinch the knot, and brush over the immaculate silver tie clip just above his jacket’s top button. He shook his sleeves out, and buttoned the jacket up with careful dignity.

Gary stepped into the graveyard and wandered in a semicircle around the church, seeing the tombstones and yet not seeing them at all, their presence entirely inconsequential.   

Of course he had seen Jimmy, before. At the asylum. Sometimes he thought he heard him in the walls, thick fingers scrabbling for purchase. Gary had spent an eternity in the rec room staring out of the filthy windows at the tall pine tree in the corner of the yard. The orderlies were unforgivably stupid, but it had been almost fun to watch them stare at the sneaker prints in the snow and wonder about where they had come from. Gary recognized the earmarks, a nurse complaining about uniforms going missing, a crushed can of JOLT soda tossed carelessly in a wastepaper bin.  Once, the man that licked the painting of a duck by the rec room doors had said an orange ghost had visited him in his room. Gary speculated on why James might want to traverse this old territory. Was he trying to figure out how to perform an abortion on his industrial park trailer trash girlfriend? Was he looking for proof of extraterrestrials he might be related to? Was he attempting to sign up for a lobotomy? (too late, it wouldn’t do any good.) But it seemed almost pointless to puzzle over the inner workings of an animal with the approximate intelligence of a sea cucumber.  …Almost.

Gary rounded the edge of the yard, seeing red hair flashing in the distance for the first time. He came to a halt by a tombstone marked ‘PHILIPS’, and his eyes dangerously narrowed. One couldn’t say that he had been _waiting_ for Jimmy, exactly. If Gary had been the victorious one, James would have been the expelled disgrace that he visited on the weekends for a quick shoe polish and a good knife-dig. (Because in this fantasy, Jimmy was homeless and living in a dumpster in the tenements.)  Anything to put Hopkins on his knees. But saying he _hadn’t_ been thinking about Jimmy was also… somewhat...entirely... innacurate. The harsh reality was that thoughts of the red haired abomination descended often on Gary’s unwilling mind, like a plague of locusts. What was he doing? (it was wrong.) How was he managing the school? (he was doing a crap job.) What did the teachers think of him? (Jimmy’s first mistake was trusting anyone at all to begin with.)  Even thoughts of his parade of sexual promiscuity offered strange interest for Gary, as if he were clinically examining the mating habits of a particularly stupid breed of primate. He didn’t think about Jimmy constantly, by any means. But he did think about him often at night… And also during the day. And during his weekly therapy sessions. As Jimmy’s lumbering figure closed the distance between them, Gary felt a strange wave of apathy wash over him, dreamlike in this initial surreal reunification. The sudden thought of shoving a butter knife hard down Jimmy’s right eye socket came and went with minimal lackluster reaction. Gary moved towards the other boy, one hand absently scratching at the puncture wounds beneath cloth at the pit of his elbow. (WHAT had they injected him with, yesterday?) 

With deceptively uncaring feet, Gary met Jimmy toe-to-toe at the edge of the graveyard, and stuck his hands gracefully into the partially stitched pockets of his slacks to keep his hands from trembling. Briefly, he even forgot about his plan for exacting revenge, instead staring down at the shorter boy with cold, dead eyes. Was this real? Was James really here? Happy Volts had done Gary zero favors, mentally or physically, and dark circles rimmed his eyes now, his strong cheekbones jutting even more sharply out from consistent malnutrition. Ghoulish, a slow sneer gradually crept across his waxy face.

Jimmy came to him nauseatingly ill prepared. What was this? Had he given any detail literally any thought at all?? The Aquaberry travesty he wore pulled too-tight across his thick chest, and his dirty slacks bunched up at odd intervals. It was a look that screamed ‘low-rent incognito yacht club wannabe’, though nothing in the world could erase the white collar thuggish glint from his beady eyes. His presence alone was so bafflingly inconsistent with the wealthy Smith family parishioners that he might as well have been a brick with a turd on it in the middle of a stack of cash. Jimmy’s buzzcut revealed a myriad of new scars, no doubt from slamming his head repeatedly against a concrete wall with Russel for no reason whatsoever. And looking at his face was painful, like listening to somebody flatlining. The auditory reaction came, then the memory of the sound of rain on school bells, of thunder rumbling in the distance, and then the hard, sharp shattering of glass.  

Gary swept his dead gaze up and down the shorter figure, and snorted derisively. “What happened, did your whore mom get knocked up by a baboon and now she needs somebody to pay for her to pop it out?”

                                                                          

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

Jimmy clenched his fists and stepped haltingly forward, barely containing the urge to just leap onto Gary and start beating. He should have been expecting this sort of welcome—picking up right where they left off, with Gary insulting his mom's alleged (primarily by Gary) promiscuity. It had worked well enough on the roof that fateful night; it was the straw that broke the camel's back and sent Jimmy grappling Gary off the roof in a rage-fueled murder-suicide. Jimmy was stronger today than he'd been then—free of the stresses of that night (brought on by months of torture from said psychological terrorist) and bolstered by his mother's bribe—but still he had to practice extreme restraint. To get the car meant playing nice, and that probably meant no blood on the Aquaberry.

So he forced a laugh, and gestured exasperation with his hands to get them to stop clenching.

"Yeah, fuck you too, Gary" Jimmy replied. He never was able to hold up to Gary in an insult war, so why even try. It frustrated him beyond reason. Sure, Jimmy wasn't the smartest knife in the crayon box, but he'd developed a pretty healthy repertoire of insults and sarcastic retorts. It had helped him deal with the never-ending parade of bullies in his life, in school and at home. But being around Gary always left him feeling like a troglodyte—a word he'd learned from Gary, in fact. Gary's insults had the potency and military-grade intelligence of laser-guided missiles. Jimmy's felt like scattershot in comparison, like BBs.

Gary seemed somewhat disarmed by Jimmy's refusal to engage, and an awkward silence fell between them. Jimmy sniffed a few times, his nose starting to run in the cold, and gave Gary a once-over. Gary looked, well—he looked gorgeous, and that only served to infuriate Jimmy further. Standing among the tombstones he had all the grace and colorlessness of a viscount vampire. He looked _right_ here, in his finery and the cold winter light. So much better than seeing his face, wan and chemically sedated, through the foggy window at Happy Volts on one of Jimmy's secret check-ins.

But whereas normally his eyes would have held a glint of sadistic mirth, today they had the glazed-over look of a corpse, and they were rimmed with circles dark as bruises. It was enough to give Jimmy pause, and his pale brows drew together in unbidden sympathy. His jaw jutted stubbornly. Might as well try to parlay, Jimmy thought. Maybe Gary was drugged enough to be reasonable.

"Listen, Gary, you and me... we got a lot of bad history. Honestly, I don't know what the hell our parents are thinking with this, since they supposedly know about what happened, but whatever. I want the next few days to go okay for my mom, and that means we put that shit aside until after the wedding. Deal?"

Jimmy shifted his weight and stuck one hand out in an invitation to shake on it. It... wasn't the strongest of reconciliation attempts, but it was a start.

 

** GARY  
**

 

In his pockets, Gary's knuckles burned. The ripped flesh pulled hot and tight as his bandaged fingers clenched slowly into fists, tension raking across his shoulders in mirror angxiety. He peered mistrustfully down at Jimmy's palm, and for the first time, Gary experienced an impulse he truly considered to be actually insane. For less than half a second, he had almost taken the offered hand of the repugnant Jimmy Hopkins. 

The palm being offered to him was slick with sweat. Meatloafish. Cumbersome. Animals had hands like those, not humans. They were clammy boulders, ripe with potential for violence. The minor, inconsequential detail of the condition of Gary's own hands kept them hidden, stuffed deep in his pockets, and a scowl grew to cover his complete physical disregard for the peace offering. But as his eyes swept up again to Jimmy's attempt at a human face, a thought struck him.  

James had _no reason_ to make peace. If his excuse was that soon they would be, dare he breathe the repulsive word, "brothers", it was a sorry transparent lie. And there it was. Jimmy was a _terrible_ liar. He lied constantly. He had lied about wanting to be friends in the first place, just like he had lied about not wanting control of the school. His lies had turned Petey against him first, and then all of Bullworth, staff and students falling like dominoes, one after another in a staggering kind of complete victory which Gary still had trouble wrapping his sizeable brain around. It was a victory which had ultimately taken so much more than just Gary's education, or his reputation. In the end, it had taken his freedom.

Jimmy had all the power. He wouldn't want to relinquish control. And he certainly wouldn't want to be friends. Jimmy was lying right now. 

Gary's scowl twitched up at the corner into an amused smirk, and he rolled his gaze theatrically up and down James's entire figure in obvious judgement. Did this mongoloid think he was anything close to an intelligent human being? Granted, his aggressive but hamfisted approach to things sometimes had it's uses, but now was not one of those times. The day Jimmy sincerely called for a truce would be the day Edna learned how to fly. This had to be about something else. Something Jimmy wanted. Something he could force Jimmy to bargain for. Anything to put him on his knees. 

 _Anything._  

A predatory glitter lit Gary's face as he advanced a step towards Jimmy, forcing him back a step as he invaded the redhead's personal space. "James, there was _never_ a 'you and me'. First it was me, and _then_ it was you. You are an _invader_. You're a _virus_." Gary's breath came sharper as he thought of Jimmy's footprints in the snow, of the missing uniforms, of the soft swish of sneakers in the dark.  "And If you think I'm going to stand around and wait for _your_ family to infect _mine_ with your _idiot genetic code_ , well, then _you_ should be the one up that hill, Jimmy-boy, not me. I _know_ you've been up there. I _know_ you're thinking you've _got it made_ right now. But you don't, James. You really don't. And do you know why? Because I'm watching you. Believe me, I am going to tear down _every_ flower arrangement, knock over _every_ tray, and slash _every_ tire I can. And you know what? I'm going to make it look like you did it. I'm going to bring so much heat down on your idiot skull that your _whore mom_ is going to lock you in a dog crate and ship you off to live with a reformed rapist in federal prison for the rest of your life before my father has her set on fire to prevent her from spreading AIDS to the rest of the town." 

It was in that moment that Gary realized just how close he had brought his face to his rival's. Jimmy's snotty frown hovered inches away from his own, lingering heat from his whispery threat dissipating slowly in the cold air. Gary froze there a moment in strangely clinical revulsion, taking in the smatter of red freckles blown across Jimmy's cheeks, before leaning back again with a toss of the hair and an effortless shrug.

"Unless--!" he amended lightly, then turned on a heel to sling an elbow casually around Jimmy's neck, pushing them towards the church. "--Unless you do whatever I tell you to do. Remember? You and me? We can _do things_."

 

** JIMMY  
**

 

One of the funny things about life, Jimmy thought, his nose not two inches from Gary's, was that it never stopped happening to you. You'd think that once something happened it was done, it was in the past. But no. Even after something happened, it was still happening, and echoes of its happening would sound across his entire life, sounding just as lifelike and realistic as the day they happened in the first place. For instance, Gary was in his face, and Jimmy's face was stone but his heart was in his freckled throat, beating with rage and hormonal lust and a tiny bit of fear just as it had back when they were together in school, in the dorm, on the roof. He and Gary meeting like this wasn't just a onetime thing, it echoed itself across his life, now and in the car and in the shower and in bed, waking him up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat.

It was these echoes, in fact, that fueled his nearly bimonthly trips to the asylum. Seeing Gary there in his rightful place helped Jimmy regain a sense of control that was stolen from him when he heard those echoes. It helped him divide the past from the present, dream from reality. Sometimes he would pull on an orderly costume and roam the halls, pausing outside Gary's door to see if he could hear him breathing. After a particularly nasty dream, he'd snuck into the cafeteria and included a little present in Gary's mashed potatoes. After a particularly... good one, he'd slipped him an extra jello cup. It was all about staying on top of things, staying in control of the present moment. A control that he could now feel draining from him, pried from him with Gary's clever fingers and wicked mind. He'd showed his hand, somehow, and his attempt to get on top of the situation had somehow ended up with Gary holding all the marbles. Again. 

The closer Gary's face became, the stonier Jimmy's got, and he even shuffled forward a bit, tilting his chin up in a bulldog attempt at a loom. The only physical manifestation of his internal reality was a brief twitch of his coal-black right eye. Oh and a slight flush when Gary mentioned his check-ins. He _really_ wasn't supposed to know about those. With any luck they wouldn't be brought up again—he sure as hell wasn't going to offer an explanation unbidden. They hadn't even begun to fight and already he'd lost. There was so much to say to Gary in response, about how fucking wrong he was about everything, their friendship, his whole assessment of Jimmy's character—but his tongue was too thick, his head swimming with rage and stuttering panic.

Gary was right, of course, about his mom—he wouldn't have to do much at all to make her believe it was Jimmy behind whatever psycho-plot he had hatching in his villain brain. What could he say to make her believe it wasn't him? No mom, I wouldn't hurt you? _Please._

He briefly fantasized breaking Gary's teeth with his forehead. He could just bounce, after all, with nothing much lost. Make Gary eat some well-deserved concrete, give the finger to his mom and walk home.  What did he owe it to her anyway? A car? Who needed a car when he was already king of this town on skateboards and stolen bikes?

But there were all sorts of echoes. Echoes of her voice calling after him from another room, cooing at him in a high chair, sleeping next to him on soft, sweaty sheets after he'd had a nightmare. These memories were far less conscious and far more dangerous even than the ones of Gary. You couldn't even call them memories, exactly, since not one of them happened after the age of three, when she'd found a new husband and a new object of affection. But these were the oldest echoes he had, and the most powerful—they exerted their control over him in mysterious ways. Jimmy jerked his chin in a barely perceptible nod, his jaw clenched in anger.

"Jimmy! Jimmy! Where are you, boy, the ceremony is about to start!" his mother's shriek echoed across the churchyard as Gary led him toward the church, one slim arm hooked around Jimmy's neck like a noose.

 

**  GARY  
**

 

Mrs. Hopkins was a woman with a shrewd face. Gary admittedly hadn't been expecting that, instead picturing some lowgrade bag of flesh resembling what had once perhaps been an attractive woman in the very ( _very_ ) distant past. Her face wasn't even square, which Gary had assumed must be the case if young James was any kind of legitimate representation of a first generation of DNA. Naturally Jimmy must have spawned from a duo of rock trolls. Either that or heavy-browed cave dwelling neanderthals. Instead, as she met them at the stone steps, she looked down at them with a sharply pointed chin and a glittering glare that could cut through brick. She was orange, like Jimmy was. But brighter. Harsher. Over-saturated.

"There you are! Please, Jimmy, I am at my wit's end with you, why do I always have to chase you around when it's time for something important? First you sleep past noon and now this??" Mrs. Hopkins clicked her tongue disapprovingly, before looking over to Gary. The disappointment faded, soon replaced with the slackjaw blank stare which Gary understood must be her thinking face.   

"And you must be the son, am I correct? Gareth? Gary?" She finally drew the line between two dots. Gary sucked in a snort. Maybe she wasn't as together as all that, after all. She WAS a Hopkins, and that was a devastating blow unto itself. 

She settled a hand on one saggy hip. "Well, I'm certainly glad to see you boys getting along, more trouble is the last thing I need right now."

If she had cared to look further into the history of her soon-to-be stepson, Mrs. Hopkins would have been more suspicious of the steadily growing grin on his angular face. Gary positively radiated, absorbing the moment of parental chastisement like a flower turning towards the sun. His grin practically twinkled in the bright afternoon light. Had this woman never laid a hand on a single piece of paper, a report, or even a summary, of the events which had transpired over the end of the last school year? Did she have no appreciation for the kind of lifelong bloodthirsty revenge campaign her idiot son had inadvertently triggered?? No. Of course not. Clearly, her head was full of cotton. (Or used condoms. Either/Or.) The gap between Gary's front teeth drew the eye to his infectious expression, which soon spread throughout his entire body. With a particularly gleeful jerk, the youngest Smith pulled Jimmy in closer, elbow circling his neck like a vice.

"Yes ma'am! I certainly am sorry if I might have given you the wrong impression from a distance. Jimmy and I are best friends!" His grip painfully tightened. "Gosh, I guess our pranks got a little out of hand last year, but I hope you'll forgive me for any trouble we might have caused you. Surely, you must remember what it's like to be in high school. When was that again, ma'am? Five years ago?"

The saccharine flattery practically dripped on the church steps. Mrs. Hopkins flushed a pretty pink and ~giggled~, her hands fluttering to smooth down the front of her dress. _Mother easily won over by flirting, check_. Gary's grin faded, but by no means died away. Casually, he traced Jimmy's adams apple with his bandaged fingertips. He could practically smell the other boy's anxiety. (Or was that the smell of mothballs? His clothes were certainly secondhand.)

"Well aren't you the polite young man!" Mrs. Hopkins cooed, before lazering a glare at her own son. "Jimmy, you could learn a thing or two from this intelligent friend of yours. You should be grateful you're going to have him in the family starting from tomorrow on, that way you two can really spend some quality time together! Maybe some of his good manners will rub off on you. Now, inside please, both of you!"

The church was small in floor area, but grandiose in scale. The stone walls  tapered up into elaborate points as wooden support beams ran throughout the building. It was a nice place to face the ruination of an entire family name, Gary mused. Hawkishly, he followed in Jimmy's shadow, who in turn tailed his mother. The three of them were passing through one of the smaller rooms, the meeting hall with a low ceiling where cookies were served after service, when opportunity struck again. Just as they passed a tall stack of folding reception chairs, Gary checked the other boy in the shoulder, sending him crashing directly into the pile. The room was overwhelmed with the metallic clatter of chairs falling chaotically to the ground, and a large crowd of adults turned to stare first with alarm, and then with condescension. 

"JAMES HOPKINS, clean this mess up this instant!"

Gary fell back, sucking in his grin, as Mrs. Hopkins thundered backwards to steamroll her struggling son.

"Do you really hate this arrangement that much? Is one weekend for myself too much to ask for? I give birth to you, I raise you, I pay for you! I send you to _school_ after _school_ after _school_ , and all you do is cause trouble! Enough, young man! Pick these chairs up quickly, and come to the chapel!"

"I'll help him, Mrs. Hopkins!" Gary stepped forward helpfully, unseen until the right moment.

Mrs. Hopkins glanced at him, her face growing soft. "Oh, bless you, sweet boy!"

She laid a hand on his elbow and Gary barely reigned in an exterior expression of revulsion, though his eyes did flicker unblinkingly down to where her fingers lingered. He didn't like being touched. By _anyone_ , much less the idiot heifer that had shit out his greatest enemy. _He_ did the touching, if that sort of unnecessary thing _had_ to happen.  

"Both of you then. Ten minutes!" 

Her high heels clacking sounded her exit, and the few milling adults remaining began to again softly chatter, quickly forgetting about the momentary scene. Gary swaggered over to the chair pile, and looked down at Jimmy's prostrate figure.

The mongaloid's face was flushed. With anger or embarrassment, it was difficult to tell. Not that it mattered. They were both attractive expressions. GOOD expressions. He wanted to smear more looks like that across Jimmy's face. (Or mud. Smear actual mud, also an option.) Gary stuck his hands in his pockets again, clearly intent on not helping. Pleasure surged through him as he gloated without saying a word, a smug grin twitching at the corner of his mouth.

Jimmy's angry stare rolled up to meet Gary's, and unsummoned, unexpected, the youngest Smith felt a hot jerk in his briefs.

His grin vanished instantly, though his body continued to freeze in the same gloating hover. For a few breathless moments he stared unblinking at the freckled boy on the ground.

How long had it been since he had...? Was it... even possible...? But the pills they had him taking, the injections... didn't they... ?

When was the last time _he had even felt like_...

Rain on the roof, striking the bells. Lightning in the distance. Broken glass digging into his back.

 _No... Absolutely, irrevocably NO_. Gary's face turned sharply into a frown, and without breathing, without even thinking, he reached down and hauled Jimmy up by the wrist without fully realizing what he had done.

He was NOT being turned on by Jimmy _dumbfuck_ Hopkins.

"...Well?" He demanded sharply after a beat. "What are you waiting for?"

 

**  JIMMY  
**

 

"What the hell, Gary," Jimmy snarled, and his thick fist was halfway to Gary's lower ribcage before he checked himself, realizing the startled looks and gasps of nearby adults. Quickly he unfurled his hand and placed it around Gary's waist, turning the violent motion into a friendly if awkward side hug, and forced a smile and wave to the group of nearby church ladies. They gave him a look like he smelled like garbage, but otherwise went back to their chatter, satisfied (or disappointed?) that there would be no violence in the house of God, their brightly colored hats bobbing as they gossiped. 

When their attention was turned away he let go of Gary but stayed in his space, his black eyes glittering with anger. 

"I said I'd go along with your stupid plan! Enough already. Quit being an asshole," he said in a harsh whisper.

Gary said nothing—extremely unusual for Gary, not to have something to say—and Jimmy noticed that his body had gone completely rigid, a strange look on his face. He looked kind of queasy. Maybe he had a stomachache.

"Whatever," he said, physically waving him off as he turned to his task. Jimmy busied himself with re-stacking the chairs, pausing every now and then to shoot Gary a pointed glare.

His mind wandered as he moodily completed his task. Of course Gary already had his mom wrapped around his little finger. All it took was a little flattery and she was putty in his hands. He wouldn't be surprised if she tried to marry _Gary_ next, though the thought gave him a little shudder. Not five minutes with him and she'd probably pick him to save over Jimmy if they were both falling off a cliff. That _phony_ over her own kid. Like always.

He slammed a particularly rusty chair closed and tried not to think about Gary's hand brushing his Adam's apple. That was a weird form of psychological terrorism that he was _really_ not expecting. Of course, it made sense for Gary to stoop to the lowest of the low, the basest of the base... but for some reason he thought that kind of stuff didn't occur to Gary. Of course, maybe he was mistaken—it was just a slip of the hand, or at worst a quick reminder of his own mortality. He set his face further into a thick, square scowl and swore to himself never to let Gary know the kind of _effect_ he could have on Jimmy. That would be a _disaster_.

"Done. Happy?" he asked, spreading his arms wide.

"Ecstatic," Gary replied, the smirk having made its triumphant return to his face over the course of his labors. Jimmy's heart felt a little lighter to see Gary back to normal—he almost looked like his old self. God, what the _fuck_ was wrong with him.

 

* * *

 

 

Jimmy rolled his head side to side on his shoulders, squinting and sighing up at the dark ceiling of the church. He was standing at the end of the line of groomsmen as his mom and Mrs. Smith giving their vows. Each of the other groomsmen was taller, darker and handsomer than the next... until you got to Jimmy, a full foot shorter than the guy next to him, the colors of his hair, cheeks and sweater booming "I DO NOT BELONG HERE" out into the proud and storied nave.

The pastor was droning on and on, his words buzzing together in Jimmy's bored ears. He clasped his hands over his crotch, then unclasped them, then put them on his hips, then clasped them again. He wasn't sure why they had to go through all this for the freaking _rehearsal_. It was _really_ trying his "possible ADD" (Mrs. Crabtree, 4th grade).

He finally stuck his hands into his pockets and tipped back on his heels, trying to steal a glance at Gary. He had to keep tabs on him, after all. 

Gary was staring forward into space, a look of dull boredom on his face laced with undertones of contempt. The contempt probably wasn't visible to anyone else in the church, unless they knew to look for it. Jimmy probably would have missed it himself, before everything happened.

He did notice that the other groomsmen gave Gary a pretty wide berth. There was a full two feet of space on either side of him, resulting in the groomsmen closer to their parents being bunched up like a herd of nervous sheep. And this one poor schmuck between the two of them, clearly unsure who to stand farther away from—the pauper or the psychopath. His aquiline nose practically quivered in distaste. Jimmy wanted to mess with him pretty bad... but no. He was here to behave. If tonight, and tomorrow, went well, then he'd be back at school, Gary would be back in the asylum, and things would be back to normal—with the notable exception of a new car, that is.

Jimmy sighed, and his stomach rumbled. He wondered what was for dinner.

 

**GARY  
**

 

Normally when Gary got in a mood like this, there was always an orderly around to yank him back down off the fence he would be trying to scale. Somebody would be there to shove a fist full of cherry red Secanols down his throat, and then they would lock him in a room. His room, technically, if any of the cells could be differentiated from one another. But for all intents and purposes they were the same, a bed, a toilet, and four damp walls being the only things separating him from the outside world. 

At the moment as he stood holding two lukewarm rings in his palm, Gary wanted, very sincerely, to murder someone. 

HOW had he looked down at Jimmy Hopkins, furiously mussed and on the floor, and felt such a repulsive physical sensation? He thought on it in repetitious disbelief. Jimmy Hopkins. After months of nothing, it hadn’t even been a girl at school to trigger a response. It hadn’t come from some idle crush, or a day dream, or a _wet dream_ ,  or even a teacher. _Or_ a salacious woman in a magazine with thick hips and a candy nickname. It had been JIMMY HOPKINS. The livestock. The trash. The muscle. James. IE, Gorilla-In-Chief. The Backstabber Extraordinaire. How? How?? _No_. It couldn’t be. 

The question dogged Gary throughout the rest of the rehearsal ceremony, painting disdain on his face and distracting him from the sights and smells of the farce of ingrates milling in a semicircle around him. The ignoramuses soon to be his real family only saw the expression of a bored teenager, but the surface disguised a much more sinister undercurrent. Gary had…reacted… _physically_ … to James. The point echoed back in indignant disdain again and again. He felt somehow _infected_ by proxy, as if he had been given some kind of idiot germ, as if Jimmy’s very DNA had seeped into Gary’s pores through a fine mist in the air. And yet, it had happened.  The thought hovered an inch above Gary’s head, like a stormy cloud. Gary had looked down at the other boy, James brimming with anger, dirty on the floor, with his comical aquaberry sweater pulling too-tight across his barrel chest, and he had felt it. _Bothered_. A hot twitch. A stir.

 And it had felt…. _disturbingly good_.

“Do you have the rings?” The reverend asked in a dull voice. He repeated the question twice more before Gary’s father, a sharp, cruel-mouthed man with a salt and pepper high fade, coughed sharply. Gary jerked his gaze up and emotionlessly pushed past the other best men to the front. He brushed roughly past Jimmy in particular, sending him a scathing glare before wiping his face entirely clean of all emotion in front of the altar. He passed over the rings and the soon-to-be happy couple paused in the official rehearsal to discuss a few extraneous details. Gary shoved his bandaged hands back into his pockets and turned again to look at Jimmy.

Jimmy looked bored. Or was that just his regular expression? That hollow, flat lining look he got when absolutely nothing was happening in that lunkhead of his? After so long, it was admittedly hard to tell. Gary stared unabashedly, looking mildly villainous.

It shouldn’t be possible. How had Jimmy managed to pull such a surprising feeling out of Gary without even trying? It was just one more piece to futilely try to fit into the peacemeal puzzle that was the young king. Gary hadn’t even given those feelings a legitimate thought in months, considering the cocktail of drugs his maniac doctors forced up his veins when he refused to swallow his regular daily cup of plastic and chalk.  The cold logic of the puzzle was his immediate first problem. Gary milled over his drug regimen, recounting every time he tongued his pills for later, or when he managed to alter the nurse’s logbook so that they would forget to come for him sometimes.  Had it been enough? Certainly it was enough if just to hold on to some small semblance of individuality at the end of the night. When everyone else moaned in their cells in the dark, or slept like the living dead, Gary remembered who he was.

So. What was it, then? Gary wracked his eyes across the ruddy pink of Jimmy’s cheeks, choosing now to imagine pushing him down in a different context. Immediately a hot trill shot through his body, and his jaw clenched hard enough to crack a tooth.

Was that it? Was that _really_ the answer? He _just wanted_ to see Jimmy on the ground. That was all Gary had _ever_ wanted. To see him sorry and begging, subservient and ashamed like the dog he was always meant to be. And if he was already on his knees?? Well, there were certainly other... _useful_.... things he might use his mouth for other than apologizing.

“I do!” said Mrs. Hopkins, and the room erupted into polite applause, all except for one pair of young hands, clenched with thoughts of violence.  

 

* * *

 

 

They filed neatly out of the church just as the distant horizon was flickering with one last strip of sultry orange. Night swept over them and headlights twinkled along the road as the Smith/Hopkins party departed on their various ways. Most of the aunts and uncles retreated to their out-of-town lodgings, or in the case of the local family, back to their plush hillside mansions in Old Bullworth Vale. Mr. Smith headed up the procession which returned the immediate wedding party to the Smith Manor at the very top of the Vale, where a valet met them at the gate and everyone was ushered into Gary’s family home for a formal dinner with close relatives.

A maid was visible from foyer where they stood removing their coats.  She squatted by the far entrance to Mr. Smith’s office, furiously scrubbing what looked like blood out of the fringe of a Persian carpet. Nobody met Gary’s gaze directly.

The dinner was a nightmare. That is, if nightmares had elaborate china dishes and a silver candelabra collection valuing in the $40,000 range. The first half proceeded relatively uneventfully, Gary mouthing ‘your mom is a whore’ beneath passing gravy boats at Jimmy at every available opportunity. Jimmy sat, conveniently, directly across from him at the narrow, but very long dining table. But when talk turned towards the children, the evening took a turn for the worse.

“-best institutions on the east coast. Truly! Why, I’ve half a mind to write to that Crabblesnitch fellow myself and have a word!”  The elderly Smith Senior Senior jabbed his salad fork in the air to accentuate his point. Gary’s grandfather had always held a soft spot for, if not Gary himself, then definitely the concept of familial lineage. The family didn’t discuss Gary’s current lodgings, but his expulsion from school was still a very hotly contested subject.

“Why, the old goat went to school with your brother! He should have a care for funding if you ask me! Who paid for that auditorium? Who pays for the sports equipment that takes our boys all the way through the season? Expelling a Smith… pah, it’s a death sentence! The nerve!”

“And such a sweet boy!” Mrs Hopkins cooed in, still clearly not over her fresh infatuation with her better replacement son. “It must have been some kind of terrible mistake! Education should take priority above all other things, don’t you think so, Warren?”

Gary’s father nodded shrewdly from the head of the table, one hand resting on Mrs. Hopkins’s wrist. “Hmm. Yes, this is marriage is a fresh opportunity.  What do you say to that, son? We’ll see if we can’t work this Crabblesnitch nonsense out for the fall. You can thank your new mother for that.”

“Thanks.” The reply was terse. The pressure of the conversation had very clearly pulled the color out of Gary’s face, and he sat now, wraithlike, in his electric chair waiting for someone to finally throw the switch. Especially in the diminished candle light, the dark circles beneath his eyes sunk shadows deep into his skull.

Mr Smith glared disapprovingly. “‘Thanks’ what?”

Gary coughed into his napkin and sat up a little straighter, as if heeding his father’s condescension. “ _Thank_ you for making me a new family. And maybe _this_ time, you’ll come home often enough to catch _this_ mother before she drinks an _entire_ _bottle_ of bleach. What does Grandfather always say? You shouldn’t keep a pet if you _can’t take care of it_.”

There was a stunned silence.

After a few moments of complete quiet, Mr. Smith carefully settled his palms on the table and pushed himself up.

“Gary, will you help me carry the parfait in from the kitchen?”

What little color, if any, drained completely away from the sitting boy, and his face grew brittle as he rose to accompany his father from the room.

“Well sometimes I’m a bit of a grump if I can’t have my dessert fast enough either!” Gary’s grandmother broke the ice when they had left, and there was a smattering of chuckles. Mrs. Hopkins, whose face had been tense, smoothed out as well, and conversation renewed afresh.  A few minutes later, the father  and son returned, each bearing a crystal bowl which they sat at either end of the table. When Gary settled down in his chair again, he kept his eyes low, and a hand distractedly went out to wipe at the corner of his mouth, now freshly split and meticulously mopped clean of blood.

If Gary seemed cowed though, it didn’t last long. Like a violent storm rolling in from a long distance away, his focus settled at last, decidedly and fixedly on Jimmy. He said nothing, letting the chatter rush over them, and beneath the table nudged his shoe off. Without needing to lean much at all, his toes breached their distance and he brushed the inside of Jimmy’s sitting thigh, locking eyes with him and raising one sour eyebrow.

“ _So_ , James. What are your plans after you graduate from the Academy in the next few years?” Mr. Smith questioned. The bloody corner of Gary’s mouth gave the smallest grinning twitch.

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

Jimmy's brain was having trouble piecing together the chain of events and sensations that were currently unfolding. His eyes were having trouble moving past the little trickle of blood dribbling from the corner of Gary's mouth. Someone was talking at him. Something—a dog or something, was touching his leg under the table. Gary was bleeding. Gary was looking at him the way Jimmy imagined a cat looked at fat three-legged mouse. 

"Son?"

The voice came again, sharper this time, cutting through the fog, and suddenly everything snapped into place. Jimmy leaned forward and began to violently fake cough into his mouth, leading the grandmother to gasp and hold her napkin to her heavily lipsticked mouth. He surreptitiously spit the gum he had been hiding in his cheek into his hand and reached below the tablecloth to stick it to the underside of the table, at the end of a line of four or five other pieces of gum he'd placed there throughout the course of the evening. It had been kind of gross to chew gum through dinner, but totally worth it as an act of subtle vandalism. He then reached his hand to feel for what he already knew was there. 

"Jimmy, stop it," his mother hissed as he finished up his coughing fit. "I-I mean, are you alright sweetie? Do you want some water?" she self-corrected, smiling nervously around the table. A server appeared and began doling out small crystal bowls of parfait with dainty little spoons stuck into the cream.

"Yeah, sorry about that," he said. "I had a tickle," he said sharply, cutting his eyes at Gary.

"What's that you were saying, sir?"

His soon-to-be stepdad fixed him with a semi-suspicious look, but repeated his question patiently while Jimmy hooked his fingers around the silken-socked foot between his legs. He ran his hand slowly down the side of Gary's foot and shifted in his chair before he replied.

"Oh, uh, yeah, after school. I was thinking I could get a job at a garage or something in town. I'm pretty good at fixing cars now. And I know some guys who could hook up—I-I mean, hook me up."

"What Jimmy means to say," his mom blurted out, "is that he wants to work for a year or two so he can save up before going to college. Isn't that right, Jimmy?" she said, her simpering tone taking a harsh, familiar turn.

"Yeah, mom. That's what I meant," he sighed. Gary's toes ghosted a little farther along the inside of his leg, in a gesture he wouldn't let himself believe was comforting, no matter how much a younger, stupider version of himself wanted it to be.

"Well, I see nothing wrong with that," Gary Senior Senior grumbled, now gesticulating with his parfait spoon. "It's a rare thing among today's youth to have that sense of responsibility. In my day..."

The old man began to ramble, and Jimmy settled his eyes back on Gary, whose face remained cold and white but for a flush at the very tops of his ears. Damn, he was hard to read. Jimmy was trying to turn the tables on him by actually encouraging this harassment but was having trouble gauging the effect. Meanwhile Gary took up his spoon and began placing dainty servings of parfait between his full, dark lips, as if they weren't totally feeling each other up under the table. It didn't escape his notice that Gary seemed to hold the cold cream in the side of his mouth that was beginning very subtly to swell.

It was almost cute, really. Gary, the almost-certain virgin if not complete asexual, trying to wage erotic war on Jimmy Hopkins? The same Jimmy Hopkins who had now made out with half the school, and felt up half the rest? He shifted forward, and Jimmy felt Gary's foot slide further up the inside of his thigh, now dangerously close to the part of his pants that was beginning feel uncomfortably tight. Okay. This had been a fun exercise and all but enough was enough. No need to show his, uh, hand, so soon.

Without warning, he took Gary's pinky toe between thumb and forefinger and pinched as hard as he could, eliciting a sharp cry of protestation. The foot withdrew from between his legs. Jimmy's thigh tingled where Gary's foot had been, and he could almost feel heat rising off the spot. His crotch throbbed uncomfortably. 

"Gary, what is it boy?" his grandfather asked, half rising from his seat out of concern for the lowest and most crooked branch of his family tree.

"Brain freeze, must be," Jimmy interjected, struggling to maintain a look of friendly concern on his face. "Be careful, Gary, you can't just wolf it down. Can't blame him for trying though, right? This parfait is _delicious_ , Mr. Smith."

Jimmy beamed around at the table. Was he laying it on a bit thick? Probably. But if it drove Gary crazy it was totally, totally worth it.

 

**GARY  
**

 

The look which spread unchecked across Gary’s face was somewhere between entertained and livid. His grin became a grimace, then swung back around to a grin again, hedging the farthest possible edge of an acceptable reaction. Finally he managed to reign his displeasure in, and ‘ _amused_ ’ took final precedence.  He could sit there and spit venom in everyone’s faces, in Jimmy’s face, in his mother’s face, without much thought at all, but that sort of thing had already put him at the other end of his father’s knuckles once this evening. A second time might be pushing his temporary freedom _unacceptably far_ , even if this whole situation made him seriously consider committing arson to his own home. He looked down at his bandaged hands instead, and even though all eyes were focused on him, he felt a sudden spike of loneliness. The feeling was confusing, and almost immediately his brain began working to smooth it over with glassy charisma.

“I’m _fine_!  I _apologize_ , I’ve just been…ah…” He held his hands up to his grandfather with a demure smirk to prove he had legitimate injuries. “…I’ve just been a little… _overzealous_ today. Stings a bit. The parfait IS wonderful, _Jimmy is right_.”

Jimmy. _Right_ about something?? Those indeed were words Gary truly never imagined coming out of his mouth. But it was needed to smooth over Jimmy’s little… prank.  His grimace fluctuated to the surface for one more moment as he swallowed the bitter spit of the lie, toe throbbing.  But soon it was gone again in favor of something possibly more dangerous than anger… he cast Jimmy a dark smile. Mr. Smith’s forehead grew a deep furrow between his brows.

The rest of the table seemed disinclined to question the youngest Smith any further on the source of his injuries. Surely, Mr. Smith knew. His office was still full of busy servants attempting to pick pottery shards out of his medieval tapestry. The distinct lack of followup solidified Gary’s hypothesis.  His …. ‘ _minor incident_ ’… must have already been discussed behind closed doors. His relatives regarded him uncomfortably now, and he leaned back a little in his chair, feeling some of his anger legitimately ebb away in favor of strange pride. He cut through the silence with a laugh, his teeth flashing brightly in the muted room. 

“It was a beautiful ceremony today! I can’t wait to see the happy bride tomorrow!”

As if a portcullis were slamming down, Mr. Smith arrived suddenly and irrevocably at his limit.  “Indeed. Gary, why don’t you and James clear the desert dishes, and I’ll have Bowman call you a cab.” 

“A cab? Why would I need-?” But the answer dawned on Gary hard, and he bit down on the rest of his sentence. For a third time that night, the color left his face, and he stood automatically and began silently gathering the fine dishes to carry back into the kitchen. Once again he looked truly ghostlike, mirroring the moment when he had first met Jimmy in the graveyard.

 _How could he have allowed himself to forget?_ The dishes chimed against one another under his numb fingers. Even for a moment? An instant? What single space of breath _wasn’t_ full of the sound of screaming in the distance? What smell _wasn’t_ soiled floors and burning hair and sour piss? Sterile chemical bleach? Blood? Vomit? Desperation?

 _How_ had he come so far in one day, only to be pulled back into the hellish hole that had consumed _every spark_ of his waking brain over the last year of his life? How could he have forgotten _where he lived?_ And how had he forgotten who had put him there?? His hollow eyes swept across the table to where Jimmy was also collecting plates, and a deep, resonant sense of betrayal echoed through his body.

The kitchen was empty when they finished depositing the finery in the general area of the sink. The room was hot-white, with immaculate tile work reaching all the way up to the ceiling. A bright, minimalist chandelier burnt six high voltage bulbs above them, illuminating the space so brightly that hardly a single shadow could be seen.  Gary looked waxy under the light, his eyes as hollow as a scarecrow’s. In silence and troubled thought, he trailed Jimmy’s broad shoulders back across the room. This was NOT how he had foreseen their reunification going. He had wanted to spend so much more time _pushing_ Jimmy _farther_ , testing his limits, aggravating him.   _Harassing_ him… Instilling in him the kind of fear that he should appropriately be feeling. Fear… _not_ exasperation. FEAR. _Not_ dejection. Instead, through sheer force of family, somehow, Gary now found himself in the losing position. Again. James had had the last laugh. AGAIN. He had the respect. The title. And in about 15 minutes, he would have the house. Gary would go back to Happy Volts and stare at a moldy spot on the wall until the sun came up again. If Jimmy didn’t voluntarily return to his throne room in the boy’s dormitory, he would be sleeping here on 1,000 threadcount Egyptian cotton sheets. 

It was too much. The pressure was unbearable. With his father, _everything_ about _his father, everything_ … and the church, the chairs on the ground, and the hot burn of broken shards of pottery cutting his hands, ripping white invitations into a thousand thousand bits…and his face, _God, his jaw,_ pounding sharply enough to chisel a hot icicle of pain up into his skull… Gary boiled over just as they approached the kitchen door. His fingers flexed once, twice, three times as his body systematically prepared itself. 

He couldn’t let the night end like this. Not like this. Not with the feeling of Jimmy’s hand sliding past his ankle hammering in his stomach, and the memory of Jimmy’s fists aching in his brain.  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t RIGHT. WHY did Jimmy always win?? WHY did Gary ALWAYS lose? His hand shot out to grab the back of Jimmy’s humiliating travesty of a vest and he swung the boy up against the wall, smirking cruelly at the sound of his rival’s skull making sharp contact. Using his height to loom down over him, one bandaged hand flat against the tile, he shoved his free forearm roughly up against his rival’s chest. 

“You know, you breathe a _word_ about this, about tonight… _to anyone?_ ” The threat was sharp and hot, close to Jimmy’s face. “You’ll be begging to be in that cell instead of me. You tell anyone? _I’ll set you on fire_.”

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

As he listened to Mr. Smith sentence Gary to another night in the asylum, Jimmy felt a sinking in his guts. Somehow, throughout the chaos of the day, he had managed to forget about that place. That Gary was going back suddenly seemed wrong, even unfair—and Jimmy had more reason than _anyone_ to want Gary behind bars. Watching the color drain from Gary's face, he saw another face transposed atop of it—waxy and greenish under flickering fluorescent lights, covered with layers of unwashed sweat and a chin dotted with stubble. He had forgotten about that Gary—the one he had visited dozens of times in the past year had been excoriated from his mind upon seeing him again in the sunlight. For a moment at least he had glimpsed the old Gary, the one he remembered from semi-sadistic machinations on October nights. The first one who'd even pretended to give a shit about him at Bullworth. The one he would have followed anywhere.

He had been terrified of seeing Gary again outside the cage, but tonight had been so much different than he'd imagined. Tonight had been _fun._ Sure it was horrible in all the ways he'd known it would be, surrounded by hordes of idiotic "adults", repulsive as they were disappointing. But Gary's persistent torment had somewhere along the line transformed into a kind of secret game, shared only between them. They communicated on a frequency that other people couldn't hear. Pushing each other farther, testing limits, boundaries. It was the kind of challenge, the kind of _connection_ , that he'd been missing.

Sure, this past year had gone really great for Jimmy. Other than a few minor challenges from new kids and disgruntled greasers, his reign as de-facto king of Bullworth had been relatively undisturbed. He was friends with everyone he wanted to be friends with, and he'd easily ignored or subdued the ones kids and teachers he didn't care for. He'd had a regular series of flings and admirers, and a pretty steady FWB situation going with Zoe. For the first time in his entire life, Jimmy Hopkins had everything under control.

But he was _bored_.

Now, his eyes glazed with shock, the crown of his head throbbing with pain, he was anything but. 

His eyes finally managed to focus again on that horrible corner of Gary's mouth, niggling at his mind all night like a loose tooth. The little trail of drying blood brought on a slow burn of anger that turned the edges of his vision white. He brought his hands up to ball in Gary's shirt, trembling between shoving him away and drawing him down, down. For a long moment they just hung there, the only sounds their labored breathing and the rustling of Jimmy's fists wringing the fabric in a confusion of anger and hatred and barely concealed lust. 

Finally he laughed, but the laugh didn't reach his eyes and his eyes didn't move from Gary's mouth.

"Tell them? Tell them what, exactly? That your dad beats the shit out of you? Or that you went for my cock in front of your grandmother, under your dining room table?"

Gary let out a strangled cry and moved to slam Jimmy's head against the wall again, which was exactly what Jimmy was waiting for. He put one foot between Gary's legs and swung him around against the tiles, reversing their positions. Now instead of being back-lit by the fluorescent chandelier, Gary's face was illuminated, almost blinding white as he stared down at Jimmy in momentary confusion and fear. Jimmy pulled Gary's face down less than an inch from his own.

"You fucking moron," Jimmy breathed, and leaned forward to lightly suck on the corner of Gary's mouth, lathing off the dried blood.

"Didn't I already say I'd do whatever you told me to?"

Suddenly, the sound of approaching footsteps sent the boys scrambling away from each other. Jimmy picked up the nearest dish and pretended to scrub it, while Gary disappeared into the hall, without another word or glance exchanged. As he heard the cab door slam closed and the sound of the tires on gravel, he hurled the plate at the floor, shattering it against the tiles.

 

* * *

 

 

Jimmy pulled the huge, fluffy comforter up over his nose, leaving his eyes exposed to glare at the ceiling. This used to be Gary's room, but Gary's father had converted it to be a third guest bedroom probably the same day he'd dropped Gary off at Bullworth. Jimmy tried to imagine what the room had looked like when Gary had lived here, if he'd personalized it at all. The only sign he'd been able to find that Gary had ever been in here was a tiny crown etched into the bottom left side of the headboard. He imagined a young Gary, his weapon an unfolded paperclip, scratching a mark of his existence just small enough that it would be allowed to stay. 

Jimmy wiped the cum off the tip of his dick onto the underside of the thousand thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, and fell asleep imagining he was walking the expansive grounds of the Smith mansion, searching for a place to hide Gary Sr.'s body.

 

 

 


	2. Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy and Gary linger on their awkward encounter in the kitchen as the day of the Smith/Hopkins wedding finally arrives.

* * *

 

 

**GARY  
**

The joke about this whole sad debacle was, in a cosmic, sweeping sense, absolutely nothing had changed. It was after midnight, and like most other nights in this place, the mentally unstable teenage inmate of cell B4 was thinking hard about a stupid kid with red hair.

Melted snow runoff dripped down the wall from his glassless window, hitting Gary’s bare foot in a slow, icy rhythm. He didn’t notice it. The stiff, thin sheets of his cot scratched at Gary’s back through his flimsy scrubs while he laid in the dark. He didn’t feel that either. His eyes instead traced unblinking tracks around the ceiling. He was trying to take a mental checklist of all of the cracks there. Six cracks. Seven? It was pointless data meant to fill his head with more white noise. More fodder to block him from the foremost problem on his mind.

_Didn't I already say I'd do whatever you told me to?_

Jimmy’s words circled around again, and Gary knew that any plan he’d had before would now need to be drastically and immediately altered. The concept of changing tactics so late in the game filled the prostrate young man’s body with a thick buzzing sensation, and his foot began to jiggle nervously of it’s own accord. His fingers tapped out a tuneless melody on his stomach, agitated energy forcing itself forward. He stared hard into the dark. Everything came down to rousting James from his seat of power. All of this. Everything. The dozens of elaborate traps he had set, the goons he had flung bodily at Jimmy in an attempt to cow his obnoxiously indomitable attitude, the rumors he had spread, even the punches he had thrown… all for the sake of righting the balance of the world. For the sake of _order_. When the dust of the Bullworth school riot settled, when the chaos rolled back, Gary was supposed to have been wearing the crown. Everything had lined up so perfectly, every trap, every conviction winning another student to his fraudulent cause. And James, like the heavy-handed imbecile that he was, had run straight into the fire. He _should have_ gone down. He should have been burnt into nothing. Utterly destroyed. Exiled. Decimated. But he hadn’t been. Like a phoenix with a 1.3 grade point average, he had risen undeniably from the dead. People _liked him_.

Unbidden, the face of Peter Kowalski drifted into the tangle of Gary’s thoughts. Once considered a friend, (possibly even a best friend? Growing up together sometimes had a way of making those,) Petey now more often than not hid from Gary. He certainly had never come for a visit. Little Petey, who once had run to the forever taller Smith boy with handfuls of bugs, or to whisper a secret in his ear, had grown to turn the other way. Petey frowned when he saw Gary across the room. He ducked, or even worse, _ignored_ him, seeming bored with the constant attention. Gary had been required to get a little more… _aggressive_ … with his pursuit of their connection over the years, but that relationship had been on the mend the day Jimmy Hopkins had entered their campus through the front gate. Gary remembered with venom the way Petey’s face would light up with hope when settling on Jimmy’s hulking figure. As if he saw something in Jimmy other than his future as a thick-necked brick layer, or a number in a federal penetentiary. Jimmy had taken Petey away. Just like he had taken Crabblesnitch away. Like he took _everything_ away.

With a frustrated snarl, Gary sharply rose and swung his legs around until he was leaning hard on the damp cement wall behind his cot. Agitated hands wracked through his hair, obliterating the ordered pattern the barber had cut and combed it into. Jimmy took everything away. It wasn’t RIGHT. How could it be possible that an ignorant peasant with a face like a rotten tomato and a brain of the same had managed to climb so high? And then at last of course, there was the _other_ problem. The… _newer_ … problem. The thoughts that both infuriated Gary and burned his insides in equal parts. Jimmy’s dirty smell. His bulky weight. Even his obnoxious voice, grating and uneducated, were returning again with a powerful haunting force. The simple truth of the matter was, try as he might, Gary _could not_ purge the memory of Jimmy’s face hovering inches below his own. He recalled those thick, hammy fingers fisting wrinkles into his shirt, and it made Smith’s teeth grate. And Jimmy’s tongue, liquid hot, had burnt the cracked corner of his mouth and terrified Gary in a way he certainly had _never,_ _ever_ anticipated. (A rare outcome in which he, for once, had _not_ considered something.) How had James managed to turn their game around so quickly? AGAIN?! And where had that mouth even been before now?? On WHAT? Or, probably more accurately, _in who_?? In too many places to dare mentioning. An involuntary shudder shook Gary in the dark, both with disgust and the tremors of something else he considered vastly more sinister.

…Sinister. Very sinister indeed, because he needed it to happen again.

The knowledge presented itself suddenly, all at once and with no effort. Gary just knew, and his agitated hands slowly sunk down to settle in his lap as he blinked at some distant point on an imaginary horizon. Moonlight poured in through the bars on his window, his legs contoured with pale strips of yellow in the shadows. All was quiet, except for the soft plink plink of droplets of runoff water now hitting the cold floor. Accepting and internalizing the fact that he wanted to… _touch… a person_ … came after, though he observed his revelation with a detached feeling, as if he were watching an episode of Animal Kingdom on TV. Hyenas in heat, right after this commercial break.

Gary glanced down at his lap, dull curiosity growing more intense. It had been so long since he had… touched…. last time…. and….. anyway, was it even possible? It had been… how long? Months? Longer? Anger and despair filled up the voids where other things usually lived, constantly accompanied by a parade of rainbow pills. Other kinds of thoughts lived elsewhere. Other kinds of… actions. This was an unbidden inclination, by any normal stretch of his usual self. So, why did people bother clawing at each other at all in the first place? It was a repulsive, odoriferous, germ-swapping ritual which only served in the end to give you a mess to clean up. (And possibly an infection.) Not to mention the vain genetic futility of touching someone you couldn’t reproduce with. That, somehow was worse because it was disgusting AND illogical. Gary liked order. He didn’t like not having the control. But now that the question had… arisen… he was finding it difficult to look away. He regarded his body clinically, a frown puckering the sides of his bruising mouth.

_Didn’t I already say I’d do whatever you told me to?_

Is that what Jimmy wanted? He WAS an animal, after all. A base, rudimentary bag of hard flesh and bone with no scruples or standards. Though it was surprising to see that anomaly pointed in the general direction of a Smith, Gary supposed after a second thought that it wasn’t surprising. Dogs in heat didn’t have scruples either. His mother was evidence enough of that. But, hadn’t the point initially been doing something that Jimmy WOULDN’T want? Something that would take him outside of his comfort zone? That had been Gary's motivation for sliding his toe across their distance in the first place. It had been meant as a torture tactic. But it hadn’t turned out that way in the end.

Gary sucked a lip up between his teeth and closed his eyes, skull rolling back against the cold wall as he recalled Jimmy’s hands on his ankle. His body felt uncomfortably warm, and he drew a knee up onto the cot, folding his arms firmly across his chest. It wasn’t Jimmy’s mouth that had physically struck him hard, but the words themselves. Jimmy’s acquiescence. His kneeling. Regardless of the tangled way they would no doubt stare at each other tomorrow, Gary was willing to risk any danger if it meant Jimmy would dutifully follow his orders again. Like back when they had first met. Before Gary saw him for the treacherous traitor he really was, and had only seen a useful galoot with a criminal attitude. When Jimmy had still been fun to hang around, if indeed that had ever really happened at all. He wanted... wanted...

And anyway, after tomorrow evening, they would be brothers. Jimmy _Hopkins_ would become Jimmy _Smith_. He didn't have a _choice_. It was inevitable. And James had always been an obnoxiously lawful goody two-shoes when it came to family affairs. Gary would have to force his hand to instigate something before the deadline. What, exactly? Gary was sure the opportunity would present itself at the right moment, though he would be sure to take a lay of the land in favor of early planning. What he did know was the general nature of his orders. He wanted the same thing he had always wanted... James Hopkins, groveling. Jimmy on the ground. Possibly bloody, tears would definitely be a bonus, but being on the ground was non negotiable. And if not? Forcing Jimmy to do something not only morally wrong but also technically illegal sounded like a great way to reassure his rival that he would never be safe again. Not from Gary. Not from his inevitable retribution. Not if Gary had anything to say about it. No matter where he ran, how far he climbed, or who wanted to offer him their helping hand, Gary would find him. He would find Jimmy, and tear him down. Again and again, if need be. Until he stayed down at last for good.

At long last, the old trademark smirk slowly rolled up again to live subtly in the corner of Gary’s mouth.

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

Jimmy woke up to the sound of sharp tapping on glass. He rolled to the edge of the massive bed and let himself slowly to the floor. He stepped into his discarded khakis and held them unbuttoned at his hip as he went to investigate the noise at the window. It was Zoe.

Jimmy lifted the windowpane and grinned down at her. Zoe. What a sight for sore eyes.

"How'd you know I'd be in here?" he called down in a kind of stage whisper.

She shrugged and covered her eyes, squinting up at him in the early morning sun.

"I guessed. Also I tried another window but hid before she saw me. Your mom wears weird bras, Jimmy."

"Zoe, gross. You want a hand up or not?"

Zoe shrugged again, but came toward the window and reached up for Jimmy's outstretched hands. Together they hauled and scrabbled her skinny body through the window, and the two teenagers came to a sitting position inside with their backs to the wall. Zoe lit a cigarette and passed it to Jimmy, who stuck it in one side of his mouth and scratched at the fire-y hairs peeking out from the top of his unbuttoned pants.

"I'm never gonna get over how red those things are," Zoe said, wrinkling her nose at Jimmy's crotch. He flipped her the bird and took a long drag, then passed the cigarette back to her. She ashed it on the windowsill behind her head and began to smoke.

"What happened here?" she said, gesturing to the state of the guest bedroom. Jimmy followed her eyes around the room, taking in the piles of open books on the floor, their pages and spines bent at odd angles from where he'd toppled them from their shelves. The desk lamp was upended, and he vaguely remembered peeing in the golden pothos. He'd had a little tantrum last night, he was beginning to recall.

"I do love me some vandalism," he offered, a bit weakly.

She didn't respond. She just frowned around at the room, as if she knew it this was different—different motives, apart from the the clear light of justice that usually drove him to defile the property of the rich and undeserving.

"So... you and Gary..."

Zoe trailed off, and Jimmy's heart thumped in his chest as the full memory of last night washed over him in the cold light of morning. Jesus tittyfucking christ. He'd kissed Gary Smith. Sort of. Last night. And Zoe knew about it. Gary, the most psychotic person he'd ever known. Gary, who purposefully and singlehandedly had caused Jimmy more misery than anyone else in Bullworth, possibly more than anyone else in Jimmy's miserable life. Fucking _Gary_. And Zoe knew. And everyone knew. And his life would never be the same. Bullworth Vale would never be the same. His mom would never forgive him for ruining her latest and greatest shot at happiness. The school would shun him for getting in bed with its greatest enemy ("His face, I just kinda licked his face!" he would scream in protest, but somehow that just made it worse). In a moment he would go downstairs and Gary would be there, in Jimmy's mother's wedding dress and holding a bouquet of butcher knives, and everyone would be waiting at the church to fling human shit at the newlyweds. They'd be whisked away to their honeymoon suite in Happy Volts and live out the remainder of their short, miserable lives with Gary performing Chinese water torture on him every morning and sticking needles under his fingernails every night—

"...you and Gary are going to become brothers today, huh? That's pretty fucking weird."

For another moment, Jimmy couldn't breathe. Then he burst into hearty, manic laughter. Tears of relief and hysteria formed at the corners of his eyes, while Zoe eyed him warily. She let him laugh himself out for a while, taking slow menthol drags.

"Are you quite done, psycho?"

"Yeah, sorry," Jimmy said, wiping snot from his snub nose with the back of his arm. "It's just... yeah. Pretty fucking weird."

It was okay, everything was okay. Nothing had happened, at least that anyone knew about. Yesterday was just a really fucking weird day. Seeing his mom again, seeing Gary again, being around Gary's weird fucking family... everything had just riled him up into a hormonal frenzy and he'd done something stupid. Stupid, not irrevocable. Not life-changingly bad. Just very, very ill-advised. It was kinda funny, actually... Maybe he'd even tell Zoe about it someday soon. Once this whole nightmare weekend was behind him.

Zoe blew the last of the cigarette smoke from her nose and mouth while stubbing it out on the carpet. She looked tired, and her makeup was smudged around her eyes—she must have been out all night, or else woken up pretty early just to ride up the hill and check on Jimmy on the day of his mother's fifth or sixth wedding. Jimmy's chest swelled with gratitude for his kind, brave friend. He should really tell her more often—

"Hey, Zoe..."

But Zoe was lifting her shirt off over her head. She tossed the weathered tee onto the overturned lamp, causing it to rock back and forth on the lip of the shade.

"Wanna fuck really quick," she asked, though there wasn't really a question mark involved.

Jimmy grinned up at her as she swung her leg over to straddle his lap.

"More than anything."

* * *

 

As Jimmy's car pulled up to the church for the second time in as many days, he couldn't stop his legs from bouncing. Despite yesterday being the first day in a year that he'd seen Gary free, today he was significantly more anxious. He couldn't help but feel like he'd put himself on the back foot yesterday. Even though in his head he'd been trying to pull one over on Gary with the sexy stuff, it was all just a little too much for his own comfort. He'd gone a little far, probably said something _really_ embarrassing that he didn't want to remember, and had _definitely_ had a stupid boner the whole time that Gary hopefully hadn't noticed.

It was gonna be okay though, he thought, scanning the crowd outside the church for signs of the dark-haired maniac. Zoe, his guardian angel, had descended from heaven and saved him from his own sperm this morning, so his mind was pretty unclouded. Hopefully his horny bullshit really _had_ put Gary on the back foot yesterday, and Gary'd just be really bashful and weird today and they could pretend this never happened. And if all else failed, it was still a day pass situation. Gary would go home to the asylum where he belonged, Jimmy would return to Bullworth, and all would be right with the world. Mom and Mr. Gary would get divorced in six months or so if her track record held up, and Jimmy would have to relive the wedding nightmare in a couple years with a different family but with significantly less psycho stepbrother involved.

Jimmy started to feel jostled by the crowd, and Gary was still nowhere in sight, so he muscled his way through the hoard of well-wishers and went into the church. Might as well piss before things got underway. On the way to the bathroom, he passed the stack of folding chairs from yesterday, and his face flushed involuntarily as he remembered staring up at Gary from the floor, that strange look on his face. He walked faster, as if he could outrun the memory.

After washing his hands, Jimmy stood in front of the bathroom mirror and pulled at the collar of his tuxedo. It was still a little tight on his neck and chest, where his body was proportionally the thickest. But all-in-all, he had to say, he looked pretty good. Even his mom hadn't had a denigrating comment for him this morning. Zoe had called him a "white trash James Bond" from the bed as he put it on, but he chose to take that as a compliment. Remembering her lying in the comforter, next to the wet spot made from the mingling of his spit and her cum, he felt a rush of blood to his dick. _Damn, Hopkins_ , he thought, and grinned at his reflection, adjusting his crotch for a looser fit. He checked his teeth for pubes one more time, checked his breath, and made to reenter the melee.

 

**GARY  
**

Appropriately, the morning brought rain.  Gary had still been awake when his cell door screamed open on rusty hinges, and a dead-faced orderly jerked a thick thumb at him to get up. Gary’s lack of sleep went entirely unnoticed. He had all his limbs, no detectable rashes, and was still wearing all his (unsoiled) clothes, so by by the usual standards of Happy Volts he was in tip top shape. It didn’t matter that _he_ was the one _causing_ other patients to set themselves on fire… Or to rip their own hair out. They were all animals together according to the key holders, all locked in the same filthy cage.  

A lukewarm bowl of watery mush was shoved into Gary's hands at the front desk. A nurse scratched a pen across his temporary discharge papers, barely bothering to spare him a glance. It was mid-morning, though without any windows here to hint at the time, the teenage inmate had needed to rely on his internal clock, and the grayish light coming from his own distant window, to help him muddle a conclusion. Undoubtedly, he was supposed to have left earlier. The bureaucracy of the insane asylum, as it so happened, operated at a deadening pace. But that was just one unfortunate side effect out of many others of staffing a medical facility with people who cared about literally nothing. Gary ate the mush (oatmeal?) with slow, calm hands as he listened to the echoing sound of patients wailing in the distance. He was ready.

The taxi ride was uneventful, and yet… somehow, it was _still_ painful this second time around. Gary looked over his shoulder at the receding institution with the same gut pang of fear that he was so sure that he could never experience before. Like yesterday, his hands found the door in systematic anxiety, and he pointlessly fumbled with the various childproof switches, clicking them back and forth. Today the fear was less intense though, and his shoulders unclenched a little more readily, a little quicker.  A sheet of misty rain hissed across the pavement and suddenly then he couldn’t see the building anymore through the fog.  

His father didn’t greet him at the house. He had departed early with Gary’s grandfather to have his suit properly adjusted and then to reconvene with his bachelor party at a smoking lounge near to the church. The house was empty except for servants, all of whom now adamantly avoided any contact with the young master. Gary wandered the house in a slow shuffle as they prepared his suit and called for the stylist. In simple street clothes, khakis and a sweatshirt, he felt odd, as if he were floating in a limbo he couldn’t see himself ever leaving. House empty, eyes never settling on his figure, heavy mist pressing in on all sides, Gary briefly wondered if he hadn’t simply died at the asylum on top of the hill. And now this was his punishment, to be alone, forever unseen, in an austere house where he had never ever truly been welcome. He looked emotionlessly at a portrait of his mother hanging in the upstairs hall. Her face was pale and cold, unsmiling.

The door to his old room was slightly ajar as he passed it at the end of the hall. Faint curiosity compelled him to lay a cold hand on the doorknob, and he shouldered inside. Though, after a moment of observation he found his jaw quickly clenching in both pain and annoyance. The room was… _filthy_. Sheets stripped from the bed hung in a messy ball on the foot end of the frame, and the floor was littered with loose pages from the books that in his childhood he had kept immaculately lined up on the shelf. A strong, chilly wind blew in from the partially cracked window, but nothing could erase the odd stench that hung in the air. What was it?? Gary stepped haltingly farther into what had once been his only safe haven, inhaling more deeply. His face screwed into a grimace, his aggravation growing. It smelled like… a _locker room_? Something filthy he occasionally caught a whiff of in the boy’s bathroom back at school. Like sweat and piss and… _something else_. Salty. Strange.

Understanding came to him then. Of course. Of COURSE his father had put Jimmy in _this_ room. It was insult-to-injury, so logically that was how the situation had to be. They had put Jimmy in this room, he had torn it up, and a servant had left halfway through cleaning the piss off the floor. _Fucking animals_. Everyone. Gary’s expression of disgust took a sharp dive, becoming smoky anger. One more thing to tic off his list of reasons to sink his fist as hard as he could into Jimmy’s stomach.

Later, after he had gone downstairs again in a huff to mill around in the living room, his presence was finally acknowledged by the staff. The suit they dressed him in was the same as the day before, though it had been cleaned and pressed overnight. Waste-not-want-not, or something like that. Or perhaps it was more like a general lack of care. Or maybe even worse than that, a _pointed uncaring_. No doubt Mr. Smith was still feeling perturbed about his multi-thousand dollar greek artifact collection’s new home in a dumpster. He hadn’t asked his son about his hands, but had used his own to make a point that now spotted the left side of Gary’s jaw purple. When the barber came to comb Gary’s hair into his usual immaculate high fade, he powdered the purple spots until they vanished.

* * *

 

Grandfather Smith senior senior greeted Gary at the front of the church, laying a wrinkled hand on his shoulder as they met on the stone stairs. Gary flinched, but allowed the hand to remain. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the afternoon sky was a dead gray, misty clouds hovering low to the ground. The old man chortled, sounding as if he were a self-congratulatory fat cat that had just eaten a nest of baby birds.  

“Well, let’s see now, what do you think of your new situation, my dear boy?” The old man asked jovially. “How does it feel?”

Gary’s lack of expression twitched into a frown. He was silent for a moment, subtly apprehensive.  “…What are you talking about?”  

Smith senior senior seemed to sag a little, confused. His hand fumbled with the stitching at the top of Gary’s jacket sleeve, pinching it up, then smoothing it out again in a not unloving fashion. “What’s this? Your father didn’t speak with you last night?”

The boy’s frown tugged up in the corner. “With which hand?”

“Now, now…”

“No, he didn’t. What are you saying?”

Grandfather Smith coughed once, a windy sound that fluttered his white mustache, and he at last pulled his hand off Gary’s shoulder. He stuck his hands in his pockets, looking a little uncomfortable. Gary stared back without mercy.

“It’s all been fixed up for you, boy! We’ve had a talk with that Crabblesnitch fellow and all’s well that ends well. No hard feelings. Understand?”

The pit of Gary’s stomach dropped out, filling his torso with the sensation of slippery ice. He said nothing, waiting for his grandfather to continue, though his face grew waxy in the poor light.  His scar gleamed red against the sudden paleness of his skin.

“..Your father and I… we’ve, err… well, we’ve had a bit of a talk. You’re _coming of age_ , and with no other children, you know… Well! I suppose now except for young James? We thought that your… extended… _vacation_ … as it were, err, well, we thought, that it was _high time_ you came home again. You’re fit as a fiddle, and you’re re-enrolling in the fall. It’s all been settled.”

Blank misunderstanding fed back to the elderly Smith off the face of the younger. Gary continued to stare in silence, rooted to the spot. His grandfather faltered.

“Do you understand, boy? You’re home now! It’s all finished with. Your things have been sent for, you don’t need to stay there anymore.”

Gary said nothing.

Smith senior senior frowned, anger rising in his wrinkled face. “Answer me, boy. Do you understand or don’t you?”

In his pockets, Gary flexed his stiff fingers, and suddenly it burbled up out of him. A loud bark of laughter. It came abruptly and his grandfather jumped at the sound, then looked at him severely.

“Come now, son, no need to be dramatic—”

But it was too late. Something, some ancient floodgate which had remained welded shut over the past year, suddenly began to groan open again. Gary laughed some more, this time the tone lighter, more giddy. Even vaguely hysterical. He looked around himself in temporary disbelief, then began in earnest to laugh out loud on the stairs of the church. The sound swelled, and his grandfather physically reacted in both fear and annoyance. He put both his hands up to shush his grandson, stepping closer.

“Alright, I see, _yes, yes, good, good_! Enough of that! Inside with you now, get along! We’re at a _church_ , boy, try to look a little _solemn!_ ”

Gary was shoved through the large wooden double doors with hasty ado, and they fell into the flow of the crowd.

With thirty minutes still remaining until the beginning of the service, Gary wafted, as if on a cloud, through the people without truly seeing them. The thought returned to him again and again, making his step lighter and his mind bright… _He didn’t have to go back_. He would _never_ have to go back. The four walls he dreaded, the thick, leathery arms of the angry orderlies, the cold burn of a chain link fence in winter, the constant smell of bodily waste… _the screaming_ … he wouldn’t have to listen anymore. He wouldn’t have to _touch_ , or _smell_ , or _taste_ , or _see_ … _anything_ … having to do with the place that had been his prison. No more needles forced into his arm. No more cheap industrial scrubs. No more doctors. No more nurses. No more night terrors or rotten foods or long days bleeding together where he saw no one and said nothing, absolutely sure he would lose his mind if they left him in that terrible void. He almost had. He had been so close to letting his sanity quietly slip away from him, even as he struggled vainly to keep a vice grip what remained of his identity. In that place, time had no meaning,  and idle time was the only thing that he was sure could ever truly destroy him. It could, and would, one day, kill him.  

Pinky Gautier, dressed in frilly blue lace, gave Gary a scandalized look as he drifted past her without a glance. As Derby Harrington stepped up behind her with a champagne glass in one polished hand, he shouted after the other boy but received no reply. The fact was, the Smiths were old money. The church was literally brimming with the rich families of Old Bullworth Vale. But in his reverie Gary spared no thought for the crowd around him. Idly, he scooped a champagne flute off a passing tray and sipped on it, normal thought very slowly returning to it’s usual pace. He was... _out of sorts_. It wasn’t seemly. He needed to get himself _together_. He giggled once, then coughed, at nobody in particular. He needed to reign himself in, especially if he was going to be around the worst people who he had ever had the displeasure of knowing. He needed to _focus_.

Swinging around the corner, Gary powered purposefully through the men’s bathroom door, and came suddenly face-to-face with the one problem he had, briefly, completely forgotten. He stopped up short, freezing by the sink as he spotted Jimmy in front of the mirror. At first the other boy's face didn't register. He seemed completely different, a tuxedo faded far into the background of an ocean of formalwear.

Jimmy Hopkins. James…. _oh… Jimmy_. _Of course_. Gary’s eyebrow twitched, and suddenly his old swagger returned. It flooded back completely, and without any preamble. It was all there. Everything suddenly made sense. It all suddenly _felt right_... Last night didn't matter. NOTHING mattered. Jimmy didn’t know that the biggest wall which before had stood firmly between them was now gone. He had _no clue_ how much closer Gary had just gotten. And there was a sick sort of thrill to that. Like a wolf looking at a rabbit who hadn’t yet seen him, Gary’s face pulled itself into a dangerous, secretive grin. They locked eyes.

Casually, Gary took a step forward. The flute in his hand swayed in his relaxed grip, and he licked his lips as he gave Jimmy the once-over. Electricity briefly crackled between them as he reached out a hand. But not to hurt. Instead, he pinched Jimmy’s collar, the pad of his thumb smoothing over the fabric. He wanted to laugh again. Or scream, he wasn’t quite sure.

Gary’s grin cracked devilishly, his straight teeth flashing bright white in the muted room.

“…Nice shirt, Jimmy-boy." He snorted. "...You almost look human.”

**JIMMY  
**

Gary was _different_ today. He looked happier, more confident. Obviously whatever happened last night hadn't thrown him off balance, because he was standing straighter and smiling wider than any time in Jimmy's recent memory. Jimmy felt the tops of his cheeks and ears burn as Gary smoothed his hand across his collar in a casual invasion of personal space. He fought down the urge to shove Gary's hand away as it finished fiddling with his collar and came to rest beside his neck.

"Nice shirt, Gary," Jimmy parroted, "You almost look like you didn't wake up in a mental hospital." 

Shit, Jimmy thought about a second after he said it, wincing a little. He kept forgetting he _wasn't_ supposed to be provoking the guy who was probably two seconds away from a murder spree. Specifically a murder spree that would ruin his mother's latest wedding scheme and prevent him from getting a car.

But Gary just giggled, and tipped the rest of the champagne into his mouth, eyes never leaving Jimmy's. This could not be good. The last time Jimmy remembered Gary giggling was when they'd seen a rabid dog rip a neighborhood squirrel to pieces. Jimmy found his heart speeding up as Gary leaned forward, his lips barely brushing Jimmy's ear.

"Maybe, but that's not where I'll be sleeping tonight."

The bottom of Jimmy's stomach dropped out, and he drew his head back slightly to look Gary in the face. Gary didn't seem drunk, though who knew what kind of meds he was on—shouldn't they be keeping the alcohol away from the guy on psychiatric medication?—but he couldn't be understanding him right. Was Gary... hitting on him?

"Uh...huh...." Jimmy said, "Gary, you feeling okay?" He made a weak effort to move away, get some space from whatever was happening. But suddenly the hand on his shoulder was a vise. Gary draped his other arm across Jimmy's shoulder and brought their foreheads together, saying in an almost mournful tone,

"Oh Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. I'm afraid you'll be seeing much more of me. Much, much more." 

Jimmy fought to keep his breath steady, his hands wavering an inch off of either of Gary's hips. He was terrified, and confused, and suddenly rock fucking hard, again. Was there such a thing as a fight-flight-or-fuck response? His body seemed to be inventing one. He asked his next question in a slow, even voice, as he imagined he would speak to a particularly illogical bear he was trying not to startle into eating him. 

"What are you talking about, Gary?"

"No more midnight visits, Jimmy. No more special Jello. I'll miss those most of all..." Gary trailed off, sighing wistfully, though his mouth (god his mouth was so close, Jimmy could probably name the brand of toothpaste he used at this point) was still held in a wicked grin.

Awareness was beginning to dawn on poor Jimmy Hopkins. A shiver of panic went down his spine, and once again he tried to pull away. Gary whipped his hands up to clutch the broad sides of Jimmy's head, forcing their foreheads together with painful pressure. His voice was beginning to hold notes of hysteria, so familiar to Jimmy from previous encounters.

"Will you still give me special Jello cups in the cafeteria, Jimmy? Will you bring them to me in class? It'll be our last year at Bullworth, Jimmy. We have to make it _memorable_."

With a strangled cry Jimmy managed to shove Gary off of him—he was shorter, but stronger after all. They stood looking at each other for a moment, breathing heavily, Gary undoubtedly drinking in the horrible recognition in Jimmy's eyes. It couldn't be. It was _impossible_. Jimmy opened his mouth to tell Gary just how fucking impossible it was when the bathroom door banged open, and Derby Harrington sauntered in.

"Gary, _there_ you are. I was looking all over for you. Oh—am I interrupting something?" Derby asked politely, though his expression belied his excitement at the nearly visible tension between the two infamous Bullworth rivals. The school had been in a frenzy ever since word got out that Jimmy Hopkins's mom was marrying Gary Smith's dad, though everyone was careful never to mention it directly to Jimmy. Still, he'd had to box more than a few ears in the past couple weeks just for animated whispering and pointing. 

Gary irritably smoothed his hair, disarranged from their brief tussle, and was about to open his mouth when Jimmy beat him to it.

"No, Derby. I was just leaving," he said pointedly, though without taking his death glare off Gary. Shoving his fists into his pockets so they wouldn't be available to strangle, Jimmy pushed past Gary and Derby, leaving them in the bathroom while he went to go find his mom.

* * *

 

 

"Come on, let me in!" Jimmy roared.

"No! It's bad luck!" came the shrill voice from inside the locked room. Jimmy pounded a fist on the door in exasperation.

"You idiot, that's only if the groom sees the bride before the wedding. I'm her goddamn kid!"

The voice got quiet as it conferred with other voices behind the door, each one higher and shriller than the last. He recognized them vaguely as belonging to various Prep mothers. They had swarmed his mom as soon as they'd arrived at the church, sweeping her off to be prepared for the wedding. It had made him kind of happy, then, to see her surrounded by other women. She'd never really had friends, and even though these were the definition of fair-weather it made him feel good to see people taking care of her. Now he whole-heartedly wished each one of them would fuck right off to wherever they came from and let him talk to his mom. She had a _lot_ of explaining to do.

"No, uh-uh, sorry," came the voice at last, though maybe it belonged to someone else. "It's just bad luck." 

Jimmy let out a cry of exasperation and kicked the door, causing it to shake in the cheap frame. He'd contained himself enough not to make a dent in it, but there were still cries of exaggerated terror from inside the room. He decided to make himself scarce before any threats about sheriff fathers and deputy husbands were hurled at him from the safety of the brides room.

He made a beeline for the graveyard, brushing past the same group of church ladies from yesterday on the way out. They made the same noises of disapproval as he moved by them, but he was careful to have his face turned away. He wasn't ready for anybody, much less horrible old women in musty pastels, to see the tears of frustration welling in his eyes.

Once outside, Jimmy made for the nearest large gravestone and sank down behind it, out of sight from the church. Luckily the rain had let up from earlier, because Jimmy doubted his mother would be pleased with a son in a wet tuxedo in front of the entire town. He sat on his heels and leaned back against the granite, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. Gary was coming back. It wasn't _fair_. Gary was coming back to school, Gary was about to become his brother, and his mom didn't give a flying fuck about any of it. He didn't know if he was angrier at her for going along with it, because if she knew about it she almost _certainly_ had, or angrier at himself for ever thinking this would go any differently.

He sniffed heavily and rested his mouth in his palm, glaring off into the fog. He had to get himself together. He hadn't had this kind of emotional reaction to his mom—to anything, really—in a long time. For some reason the unholy collision of her and Gary in his life had sent him into complete turmoil. He felt like he was five years old again, waiting at the elementary school for hours because his mom had forgotten to pick him up. Breaking crayons and throwing tantrums that had him brought to the principal's office, just to get some attention, just so somebody would give any kind of reaction to the fact that he was lonely and in pain. _Anger issues_ , they had written about him. Yeah, no fucking _shit_.

He sniffed again and wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeve. No actual tears, thank god, but close enough. He wished Zoe were here. She would understand. Or if not, she'd just sit beside him in silence and smoke a cigarette, staring off into the fog with him. Maybe point out a particularly stupid name on a gravestone. That made him smile a little bit. Rich people had _really_ stupid names.

As he stood up and brushed off his pants, he heard a voice call out tentatively—"Jimmy?" 

He peeked around the gravestone. Speaking of stupid names—it was Pinky Gauthier, picking her way through the mud with a look of extreme distaste on her face. Jimmy ducked back behind the statue and dug his fingers into his eyes one last time, just to make sure there was nothing there. Then he went out to meet her.

"Hey Pinky, what's up?" he called. She looked ridiculous in her frilly blue gown, which she had hiked up to her knees in terror that it would touch the ground. It was pretty nice of her to come out after him, actually. It must have taken a lot of guts for her to get her clothes anywhere near dirt.

"Oh, Jimmy, there you are!" she said, and waited for him to approach. She laid one white-gloved hand on his offered elbow and let him lead her back toward the church.

"I just wanted to check on you, you know. See how you were feeling." Jimmy could sense Pinky searching his face, so he kept his eyes fixed on the ground ahead of them.

"What are you talking about, Pinky?"

"Oh, well, what with the wedding... your mother and Mr. Smith, you know..."

Ah, of course. Gossip. It's what they all wanted at the end of the day. To see how the king of Bullworth was holding up under duress. It was the first time since he'd come into his reign—since _Gary_ had been sent away—that he'd faced a real challenge. Naturally they'd want to check and see if there were any stress fractures in his walls. Well, he wasn't about to show her any.

"Don't be stupid, Pinky, it's fine. My mom's been married a zillion times. It's not like it'll last." He tried to sound like his usual cocky self, but he could tell the words were ringing a little hollow.

"I'm not stupid!" she protested, her voice taking on the same quality of shrillness as the faceless ladies' as she wobbled and picked her way across the lawn. He wondered vaguely if one of those women was her mother, or maybe Derby's mother. Did they have the same mother? He couldn't even remember anymore.

"I'm trying to be nice to you, Jimmy Hopkins!"

"I know, I know. I'm sorry, Pinky," Jimmy said, giving her a little sideways grin. "It's just... it's just been a bit stressful, is all."

 She smiled at him, obviously self-satisfied that he'd proven her right. Oh well, let her tell them he was a little stressed. He was only human, after all.

"I forgive you. Now let's get you inside. I think the ceremony's about to start."

 

 

**GARY  
**

Derby hadn’t wanted much of anything, as it turned out. When they found themselves alone again in the bathroom, the awkward silence that had followed had caused the blonde heir to swig his champagne back with a little too much enthusiasm. Gary stared back pitilessly, waiting for his off-tempo heartbeat to calm down. Why was he _still_ feeling so breathless? He gritted his teeth as he waited for the inbred mini-mogul to simply just spit out whatever it was that he had to say. Irritation flashed in his eyes.

“Ah… Well _done_ , old chap, did you tell Hopkins off or something? He looked positively _stupid_ just now.” When Gary didn’t answer, Derby laughed, the sharp, snotty noise echoing off the tile. “...you know I’m _absolutely exhausted_ of his ego!”

 Something about the tone of it irked Gary. He was already still winded by Jimmy’s close proximity. His hands kept rising in slow, precise swipes to smooth down the perfect creases in his hair, concealing the wild hammering which was slowly beginning to ebb down in his chest.  But Derby’s smalltalk brought on a tight frown, so much more so than anything else that had just happened. Derby had _interrupted_ them.  Derby knew next to _nothing_ about what was going on. Derby had merely been _curious_. He might have kissed Jimmy’s pimply ass in the past, but he didn’t really know anything about him now. He was just hunting for a weak notch in the wall to exploit. And furthermore, on top of all that, it was definitely _none of Derby’s business_. This was… Gary milled it over, his unblinking eyes burning a glare up and down the tall blonde’s maroon and powder blue suit…. it was….

 _It was family business._  

Gary finally tilted his head to the side, and offered a faint smile that seemed to relax Derby from where he stood by the door.

“You don’t _touch_ him, Harrington. You don’t _look_ at him. You _don’t talk_ to him. Not unless he talks to you first. And then? You do what he _tells_ you to do. You understand me?”

Derby’s shaky comfort backpedaled instantly into indignation. The affronted boy grunted in anger, standing up straighter to loom down at the social pariah he had never had anything but disdain for. “ _What_ did you say to me, you indigent _sociopath_?”

Gary’s smile grew again into his trademark dangerous grin, and he chuckled as he casually stuck his hands in his pockets. “…Relax, friend! I only _meant_ that I had already called _first dibs_.” There was sugar in his voice. Casual camaraderie, as if everything was all one big joke.  “You know, stuffing him in a _trashcan_ , pushing him down some _stairs_ … that sort of thing. What did you _think_ I meant?”

There was a soothing effect in the disarming tone.

“Oh!” Derby fumbled. The preps didn’t usually address Gary Smith directly, and the ambiguity of this marriage situation clearly reflected on his inability to gauge how he should now treat this older foe. “…Well, in that case, old boy, I… suppose it’s…”

“And for the record? I’m _not poor_. But, you already knew that, didn’t you?” Slow understanding began to creep across Derby’s face as Gary spoke. “I’m re-enrolling in the fall. Got any openings at Glass Jaw for a guy like me?”

Gary made for the exit, and patted Derby’s surprised shoulder as he left through the swinging bathroom door. 

 

* * *

 

The terrible thing was, the ceremony went off without a hitch. Gary fantasized throughout as he stood with the other best men in a tidy line, imagining things he could have done, people he could have turned, furniture he could have smashed, that might have put the breaks on this inevitable marriage.  He thought maybe if he had lit the grand old tree hovering over the church roof on fire… or if he had slipped laxatives into the sherbet punch, or even if he had flung himself (or better yet, Jimmy) in front of a car, causing a mass exodus to the hospital… anything would have been better than nothing. And yet, he frowned to himself in perfect silence.  He hadn’t done anything at all. He hadn’t lifted a finger to stop the train wreck that he now watched with dead eyes. He had handed the wedding bands over quietly, instead of turning on his shiny black oxfords and flinging them as hard as he could into the scandalized crowd. It wasn’t that he had wanted this marriage to happen… far from it. Not EVER. But his hands had remained uncannily still as he listened to the presiding reverend speak. He felt calm, for once, thinking of the quiet of the inside of his room back at the Boy’s Dormitory. He felt calm, thinking of the soft cloth of a collar beneath the pad of his thumb.  He didn’t understand it. But the far horizon of his thoughts tickled at him, and he sucked on the insides of his cheeks, and he looked contemplatively at Jimmy’s quiet face.    

Jimmy looked like he had been crying. It was a revelation that had hit Gary more _physically_ than mentally, for a change. It made him grow uncomfortably stiff in his boxer-briefs for a good fifteen minutes, consuming every fiber of his attention... though, he had managed to stand at casual attention with his hands clasped at his front, masking the new and painful condition his rival now inexplicably brought on. Hopkins already had a face that normally looked like he flung himself repeatedly against a cement wall. His cheeks were ruddy with hot, textured skin. A storm of mismatched freckles dyed the top half of his head a perpetually raw orange color. And the squint of his eyes, suspicious and distant, gave him a relatively small range of facial expressions to fall back on. 

But something was different about him now.

Jimmy stared at the ground, doggedly tracing the swirls in the carpet as the ceremony progressed. He looked… _defeated?_ Gary’s mouth grew dry as his gaze flitted between his father and his rival. The flesh around Jimmy’s eyes had grown puffier than usual, with more of a pinkish tinge than his usual aggressive orange. All those things, his furtiveness, his flu-like rawness, would have been enough of a hint on their own. But the brief flash of pain which had bled across his face when he first saw his mother in her heinous Far-Too-Lacy-For-A-Middle-Aged-Woman spectacle of a wedding dress had been the clue that said it all. Gary couldn’t tell if Jimmy looked more disgusted or heartbroken. The pity of it was, nobody had bothered to _actually, really_ , look at him. Nobody cared about how he felt. Not when there was a bride to admire, and sacred vows to soak in over a tearful pocket square. _But Gary noticed_. He cast a glance out into the audience, immediately settling on one distant, pointy face. And Pinky had noticed, too. But she was less of a concern, categorizing more as only a mild bother.

Wedding bells rung out a deep slow melody in the tower above them as the crowd mingled, post-ceremony, in the recreation hall. Waiters drifted through the crowd passing out tiny cups of caviar and more champagne, and in the corner a classical string quartet was unpacking to perform a few hours of the same lame drivel that now bored Gary to tears. He still felt stronger, more confident, even after watching that whorish Hopkins woman wrap her lips around his father in an overly crass display of cheap affection, while a whole room of wealthy people showed their misguided approval with polite applause. There had been flower petals.

The crowd was thick here, and Gary hedged along the edges, where wide stone columns lined a lower alcove containing benches, and the assorted stained glass window. He saw Jimmy from a great distance as easily as if wearing heat-seeking goggles. The idiot was by himself. Sulking, no doubt. Like he had been sulking for the past three hours. Perfect.

Gary stalked down the barren alcove, moving past patches of dim blue and red and yellow from the facades of saints filtering in late afternoon light. Quietly, he came up behind the other boy, who was leaning heavily with one shoulder into the side of a column. He looked appropriately, even deliciously, sad. A white flower petal stuck to his collar behind his neck, no doubt trapped there from the perpetual arch his head made from staring at the floor. Gary reached out two nicely healing fingers when he grew close enough, and quickly plucked it out. He blew once on the bare stretch of skin to eliminate any other debris, and when Jimmy physically jumped, he swung back around the other side of the column to meet the boy in the front. Roughly, he shoved his glass of champagne into Jimmy’s thick fingers.  

“What’s the matter, doggie, _cat got your tongue?”_ Gary smirked, leaning a little too closely up against James and peering down at him through his drooping fringe. The crowd that surrounded them was comprised mostly of adults and the elderly. Nobody gave them a second glance. 

“Wanna talk about it? Go ahead, speak!” When Jimmy glared angrily up at him with hurt in his eyes, Gary shrugged, smiling easily. “…Doggie doesn’t get a cookie if he doesn’t speak.”

 

**JIMMY  
**

"Fuck you, Gary," Jimmy fired off automatically, though there wasn't much heat behind it. He was so tired. Wallowing in self-pity took a lot out of him, it turned out. It was typically against his nature. He did gratefully take the glass of champagne and tip it back, letting the liquid slide into his empty stomach in one long gulp. Oh yeah, _alcohol_ —why hadn't he thought of this before? Alcohol _existed_ for days like this.

"Does the doggie's bitch mother not love him enough? Is that why the doggie is so sad?" Gary twisted his mouth into an exaggerated pout, crowding Jimmy against the column.

"Not today, Gary. Not now," Jimmy bit out, the alcohol and sheer force of Gary's presence energizing some fight back into him. There were perks to having pure evil around, Jimmy was starting to get—it made it pretty hard to feel numb. He cast around for a waiter, but they were unfortunately scarce in this more remote part of the church. He spied one bored-looking one drifting nearby and signaled. Gary stepped back marginally, subtle irritation on his features.

"Thanks," Jimmy said, and lifted the whole tray of drinks from the waiter's hand.

"Uh, sir..." the waiter started, but apparently reconsidered his protest upon seeing something in Gary's face. He turned on his heel and skittered through the crowd.

 Jimmy set the tray down on a nearby bench and took two more glasses off it. He made to offer one to Gary, then jerked his hand back at the last second and downed it in one. Gary returned a look of disdain.

"You're such a child, _James_."

 Jimmy grinned at him out of the corner of his mouth as he started on his third glass. He noticed Gary's eyes lingering on his throat as he swallowed, so he took his time, sipping slowly with exaggerated gulps. Gary didn't even seem to notice the hunger splayed across his features, his eyes trained on Jimmy's Adam's apple with laser-like focus.

Alright, so it was official. Gary wanted to fuck him. Gary wanted to fuck him _bad_. He was just too stupid to have figured it out yet.

The very idea sent a little shiver of self-destruction down Jimmy's spine. Fucking Gary, his rival-cum-step-brother in the church on their parents' wedding day? His head swam with a mixture of lust and French grapes. Of course, of course, that's where this all was heading anyway. Gary edged in closer, returning to his earlier line of assault.

"Come on, doggie, speak. Tell me how you _really feel_."

He heard his mother's exaggerated laughter cut through the murmur of the crowd. The sound tipped a scale inside of him, and he slipped out from under Gary, palming two more glasses of champagne.

"Not here," he said, and gesturing at the nearby crowds. He tried to look sheepish, like he was embarrassed to reveal his feelings in front of so many people. He wished he was the kind of person who could voluntarily look like he was going to cry. God, that would probably give this fucker a boner, if he could squeeze out a few tears right now. 

He led Gary to a small side-door at the back of the church. He pushed one of the glasses into Gary's hand and hauled open the door, casting a last look around to check for watchers before slipping into the dark room.

The moment the door clicked shut, Jimmy barreled into Gary with the force of an adolescent bull. Both glasses of champagne fell to the floor and rolled across the carpet, the liquid splashing over Jimmy's shoes. Jimmy reached his massive hands up to wrench at the short hairs behind Gary's ears, and brought his thin, cruel face down to crush into a kiss.

 

**GARY  
**

The grin was the nexus point, he decided. It was _distracting_. Gary liked that half-swallowed little twitch, hiding in the corner of Jimmy’s mouth, subtle, and yet amusingly sincere as the redhead tossed back champagne like a man self-anesthetizing before surgery.  It pulled at Gary, calling a shadow of that grin across his own face. It was a rare bird indeed to see Jimmy looking at him with any expression other than anger or boredom. In the end, Gary decided that it was still the result of a button he had pushed. A button was a button, so it was the _reaction_ that _really_ mattered the most. Jimmy had felt something because of Gary. Because of something he had said. That was, strangely, enough for the moment. Without fully realizing it, his eyes went to Jimmy’s throat, and lingered.

This attitude Jimmy was wearing right now was attractive, too. He was behaving recklessly, like he had given up entirely on any effort to maintain appearances.  It was pleasantly destructive, and Gary felt himself beginning to enjoy watching this train wreck lining up to happen. James certainly had no trouble tossing back consecutive flutes of champagne, and it affected him quickly by flushing his already ruddy face an even surlier red. Gary’s smirk cracked wider, showing off the gap between his teeth. His grin practically cracked his face when Jimmy stutteringly requested a change of location. Was he feeling… _shy?? Defeated?_ Willing to SHARE??? God, if this wasn’t some rich soil he had just dug up then he didn’t know _what_ was.

It was only when the heavy wooden door clicked closed behind them and his champagne was roughly knocked out of his hand that Gary understood that he had walked, somehow inadvertently, even _idiotically_ , into a kind of trap. His mood shifted hard, swinging like a hammer in the opposite direction. 

Jimmy’s mouth was full of the taste of sour berries, and something thicker and more pungent, entirely his own. Gary sputtered against his lips, struggling to scratch off the thick fingers that were gripping his scalp so tenaciously. He ripped them apart with a gasp, his heart hammering at a hundred miles a minute. Immediately his wrist flew up to drag across his face, wiping spit and condensation away with a grunt of disgust. Gary’s germophobia returned in full force, his brain prickling painfully with dangerous fantasies of brain-eating amoebas, or herpes sores, or sharing DNA with more of the Bullworth student body than he had ever even spoken to personally. He grimaced, falling hard back against the door as his free hand dug painfully into Jimmy’s shoulder.

 _“What’s your DAMAGE, moron?”_ The taller boy rasped, his confused hand not quite pushing or pulling Jimmy in either direction. 

This was a trap. It was a setup. It was all so clear now, so _blindingly obvious_ , that Gary flooded with anger at himself at the thought that he hadn’t initially realized it.  How much more ’Hopkins’ could you really get? Jimmy was sad. He drank alcohol at an alarming rate. And then he receded as hard as possible into his moronic body’s physical coping mechanisms. Like Mrs. Hopkins did, like he had seen Jimmy do a hundred times before, it was a predictable pattern.  Now that it was directed at him, however, Gary found himself floundering with shock. If only briefly.   

Is this what Jimmy _wanted_? Fine, he could consider it a… _brotherly boon_ , if only for just this one time. But it would NEVER be on his terms. Gary’s expression hardened behind the black cloth of his arm in the dark. 

He ripped Jimmy’s shoulder forward and stepped out, slamming him face first into the door. Quickly stepping around, he shoved hard up against his shorter rival’s backside, grinding him into the wood.

 _“Nice,_ Hopkins, _reeeeallly nice.”_ He whispered, his mouth spilling hot air in a gush down Jimmy’s neck. “I knew you were a one trick pony but this is really, really pushing it.”

Gary’s scabbed knuckles pushed underneath Jimmy’s tuxedo jacket and skimmed his lower shirt cloth, barely pushing his fingertips past the tight waistband. 

“Are you _happy now?_ Is this what you _wanted?_ Is this why you kept coming back to the asylum? I thought I was going crazy, at first. I didn’t think it could _really_ _be you_. It was too gross, even for a dog. But I see it now. _I see you_. You couldn’t wait to put your hands on me again, could you? You’re _pathetic_ , Jimmy-boy. All you needed to do was ask.”  

Jimmy smelled like sour, nervous sweat stuck in a poly-cotton blend. He smelled like dirt and too much champagne, and the heavy stink of rapid evening breath. Gary’s face hovered close to Jimmy’s neck, inhaling, yet not touching his mouth to any part of him. This didn’t make sense. It wasn’t logical. It was too much in Jimmy’s territory, physical and rudimentary. There was no fine, nuanced thought to the way Gary’s dick was getting hard as he shoved Jimmy’s face into the door. It was only the thought of the look on the shorter boy’s face from earlier that fueled him now, lost between sadness and disappointment. This was an extension of that. Jimmy didn’t want to make good decisions right now. He wanted to burn it all down. Gary’s breath came faster, his whole body suddenly aching in sympathy for the sentiment. His right hand slid around front and dove, pushing his palm over the lump in Jimmy's pants.  

 

**  JIMMY  
**

As Jimmy's face connected flatly with the door, he realized he hadn't really thought ahead to what would happen if Gary rejected him. It wasn't something he'd really had to deal with before. Despite the fact that Jimmy was hardly the handsomest guy in the Vale, he'd had terrific success in his sexual endeavors thus far. Of course, he'd also never pursued someone quite as _violently_ as he had Gary.

So he briefly wondered if he was maybe going to die. Maybe Gary would just batter his head into the wall until blood filled his nose and mouth. Or maybe he'd tie him up in an old choir robe and run screaming into the church, summoning everyone in to look at Jimmy's wilting boner while he laughed like a hyena.

But there were Gary's clever fingers skimming the bottom of his stomach, wriggling past the outer layers of his clothes. Jimmy sucked in a breath and felt them linger just beneath his waistband, his body completely tensed. In a way, he was more prepared for Gary to kill him than he was for this.

Jimmy'd fooled around with plenty of guys by this point in his brief-yet-expansive sexual life, and the way it normally went with them was generally the same way it went with girls. It could start out a little rougher with some of the guys, as they went through this pantomime of struggling for dominance before things settled into the way they'd always been and the way they'd always be, with Jimmy in charge. It was kind of funny—despite the fact that he was three feet shorter than approximately everyone he'd ever made out with, male or female, he was wider and stronger and his general attitude of confident masculinity generally awarded him the dominant position. If anyone did any manhandling, it was always Jimmy.

So now, his body pinned under the angry weight of Gary Smith, his mind was spinning like the tires of an overturned car. This _wasn't protocol_. There was no program for this in his sexual repertoire.

Gary was talking to him, filthy questions spilling out of his mouth and onto the back of Jimmy's neck in waves of heat. _All you needed to do was ask_. This cocky fucking asshole—Jimmy opened his mouth but his reply was transformed into a moan as Gary's hand cupped his dick through his pants, Jimmy's hips tingling where his waistband snapped back into place. Jimmy jerked his hips forward to try and connect harder with Gary's hand, which earned a dark laugh from somewhere over his left ear.

"What did I just say?" Gary's grin was nearly audible in the darkened room.

Jimmy let out a string of curses, which Gary met by digging his fingers harder into Jimmy's shoulder, still twisted backward in a dangerous angle.

"Fuck, Gary, come on, man. Please just—" 

"Please just what," Gary asked, tracing the outline of Jimmy's cock with the tip of his finger.

"Just—just get me off, Gary, Jesus."

"No, sorry," Gary said, withdrawing the hand on the front of his trousers but keeping Jimmy pressed firmly into the door.

"Not until you say it _right_. James, say—Gary, will you please masturbate my filthy dog penis to help me escape the brutal meaningless of my existence?"

Jimmy let out a cry of frustrated rage and twisted violently in Gary's arms, which ended in him shoving his hips backward into Gary's and feeling a reciprocated hardness. Gary let out his own little moan at the contact, and Jimmy grinned into the wood. He couldn't help but retort.

"Thinkin' about dog dick get you hard, Gary?" 

That earned him another rough twist on his shoulder, and Jimmy felt stinging at the corner of his eyes for the second time that day. God, he was going to beat Gary into the _ground_ after this. That is, if he was even able to—his shoulder felt about to pop out of its socket.

For now, though, he just ground his ass back further into Gary's hips. He brought his other hand up further to help brace his weight on the door, and felt Gary's other hand curl back around the edge of his hip.

"Come on, Gary, please," Jimmy said, his voice pitched low and hoarse with sincerity and desire. His head was clouding, his shoulder ached, and he was growing tired of playing. If he didn't feel Gary's hands on him soon he was going to lose his mind.

 

**GARY**

Begging, it seemed, was really working in Jimmy’s favor. The distressed, hungry crack to the redhead's voice had Gary doubling on himself, pushing harder, leaning harder, making everything about him, harder, apparently, so that it took a long minute of heavy breathing to remember where he was and what he was doing. In the dark, it was easy to get lost in his own thoughts. He didn’t have to _look_ at Jimmy’s idiotic face, only shove it roughly into the splintered door of this glorified coat closet and _think drunk thoughts_ of satisfied revenge. Gary wasn’t personally drunk, of course. He would never allow himself to be that compromised intentionally. Not when he was flush against a situation he had dreamed about a hundred times by now. But this was a lot all at once, and for all of his cleverness and enthusiasm for humiliating this suddenly willing victim, he found his hands clenching tightly, skirting, smoothing, and caressing, in thoughtless, lost patterns. Finding his voice caught in his throat, he inhaled deeply and fumbled instead with the front of Jimmy’s pants, popping the top button.

 _‘It’s called ‘Antisocial Personality Disorder’, would you like to see the definition?’_ Gary’s therapist’s voice shot across his haze, cutting a hot bolt of clarity through his muddled senses. _‘It means you have trouble relating to people. Your father has spoken at length with us about your… troubles… throughout elementary school and beyond. How do you feel about the little Wilson boy? They say his burn scars will fade in about a year or so.’_

Gary’s hand faltered, even as he pulled Jimmy’s back hard up against his chest.

 _‘Mr. Smith! You are, without a doubt, the nastiest little boy who has ever walked the halls of this institution! I am galled that you even assumed your career could be launched from this venerable institution!’_ Crabblesnitch, his arm in a sling, poured condescending venom over Gary’s sitting head. _‘Your father has been alerted to the situation. Your things have been removed from the dormitory, effective immediately! A taxi will be here in 20 minutes to relocate you to a far more appropriate facility to care for your unmanageable issues. Young Hopkins was good enough to show me the error of my sympathy. Turn in your head boy badge, I am relieving you of the authority, right now!’_

Jimmy’s breath was heavy against the wood. His body radiated heat like a furnace, thick and hot against Gary’s stomach. He smelled like too much alcohol, and the tender pain that cracked his groans spoke entirely of a desire to feel something else… to leave himself behind. He wanted the chaos, because he was drunk. Because he was sad. Because he was alone, wrenchingly, just like Gary was. But he had DONE THIS. He had _put them there_. BOTH of them. He hadn’t wanted to play nice when he’d had a chance, and _now_ where were they? Scrabbling at each other’s bodies with disgusting abandon in a church storage closet like they hadn’t sincerely tried to murder one another, at least one attempt each. They had _scars_ , for christsakes. And though Gary liked the danger and depravity of this new situation, now he had to consider that they actually, _legally_ , were _brothers_ now. This whole debacle was the fruitless end to one continuously repeating travesty.

“Give up the withholding act already!” Jimmy’s voice was hungry, and now more frustrated than ever. He sounded stupid as he ground back into Gary's looming shape. Jimmy was base, quivering flesh. He wrenched around as far as his restricted shoulder would let him, and Gary let slip a breathy grunt when he saw the smallest glitter clinging to the pink under his eyes. Was he really, _really_ fucking crying? … _Right now??_

 _‘Don’t bother writing home.’_ His father said tonelessly. _‘Just focus on your… recuperation. Come back when you’ve got it... out of your system.’_

Jimmy had done this. All of this. Everything. This was HIS FAULT. How could he ask for ANYTHING? What _right_ did he have?? Where did he get the idea that he could get his rocks off this way? That this was even _remotely excusable??_

But his face. Even in the dark, he looked stupid and hungry. He looked lost. 

“You are SUCH a piece of trash, you know that, right??” Gary grit through clenched teeth, and pulled him from the door to flip him, slamming him roughly back down again. This time, he took more pleasure in scraping Jimmy’s spine into the wood. His free arm snaked underneath his armpit and yanked one arm up, his scabbed fingers wrapping around Jimmy’s forearm to tangle them impossibly together. He wanted Jimmy to feel trapped. Gary wanted him to feel the same futility and powerlessness that until only recently,  had consumed his entire life. He needed Jimmy to be scared.

He ripped Jimmy’s pants all the way open and shoved his hand past his boxers to grab his dick. He would jerk this loser off 2/3rds of the way and then leave him like that. It was more than this moron fucking deserved. Gary would be _generous_. And he would make sure in the future to remind this stupid asshole again and again exactly how much he really owed his _new big brother_.   

 

**JIMMY  
**

"Shit, shit, shit," Jimmy babbled, and knew as Gary's fist closed around him that he wouldn't be able to last long. Gary's grip on his dick was savage. Jimmy almost wanted to tell Gary to slow it down a bit, loosen up, but he was terrified of breaking this spell, this weird dream. Heavy breathing in the dark and Gary wrapped around him like a boa constrictor, he could see nothing and feel nothing but Gary everywhere. He wished they were naked, he wished he could touch Gary or move or speak at all but something in his brain was broken and he was helpless. If Gary weren't propping him up he might have fallen to the floor, a puddle of abject need.

He stared at Gary stupidly, open-mouthed, his eyes wide and glassy like a fish. His face was so close again, and in the dark Jimmy could just see his eyes flashing in fearsome concentration. Fuck, he wanted to kiss him so bad. He would have, too, if that hadn't gone over so poorly the first time. He felt his tongue resting heavy on his lower lip, his body tense and straining toward him even as he was all around him. He threw his head back against the door in frustration, knew he would have a knot there the next day.

"Fuck, Gary, I'm gonna cum," he whined, and felt he felt Gary's hand suddenly slow, his grip soften. But he didn't stop. Gary tilted his head just so, as if he were considering something new, and Jimmy saw his opening. He tucked his face up into Gary's neck, slotted the flat place between his eyes and nose up into the angle under his jaw. He felt Gary tense at the unbidden contact but he didn't care, he could smell and taste his sweat and he couldn't help himself, he was licking and sucking into Gary's neck, biting the flesh there and coming with jerking hips into Gary's open hand.

 

**GARY  
**

Abruptly, Gary stepped back to avoid the splash, though his hand did linger on the hot flesh until Jimmy stuttered a final stupid sound and filled the other boy’s palm with wetness. Cum glistened suddenly on his hand, and it filled the room with the stink of sex. Gary didn’t so much let go of James as he physically threw him away, the redhead slumping disjointedly against the wood a few inches lower than normal in the aftermath. Gary brought his hand close to his face to inspect it. Distant curiosity painted him first, then came a look of vague disgust. It was visible, even in the dark. Just like the almost opalescent sheen of sticky cum as it sluggishly dribbled down Gary’s wrist.

HOW had he just let this happen? He was incredulous first, then returned his glare to Jimmy. Jimmy and his sneaky, traitorous mouth. The taller boy’s throat still tingled unpleasantly. It had… _distracted_ him.

 _“Gary, I’m gonna cum!”_ the scarred teenager pantomimed, in a pointedly cruel falsetto. A bark of humorless laughter followed. “…Are you _happy_ now? Do you feel _better?_ Out of all the tantrums to possibly throw, you _definitely_ picked the stupidest one. I’m not surprised, but… you’ve got _problems,_ friend.”

Oh, bitter irony. With a sharp whip of his wrist, Gary flicked the spunk off his hand and it hit the carpet between them, splattering the toe of Jimmy’s shoe. Humans were disgusting. Why had he thought he had wanted to do this, again? Had Jimmy’s bulk quivering beneath him really,  _really_ felt that good? He sucked his breath in, pushing everything else mentally down.

Jimmy was boneless in the dark. But his face, even hidden in shadow, was still an obvious red. What was it, now? Too much champagne AND the burn of humiliation? Gary could only hope. Of course there was no accounting for just having shot his load. OR no accounting for just having terrible genes to begin with. That was ALWAYS a prime factor to consider.

On a second impulse, Gary settled his still sticky hand pointedly onto the wall by the door, and leaned close in again to Jimmy’s limp figure.  Gary’s own body heat was receding now that Jimmy wasn’t physically begging him for anything anymore, and a more logical cruelty was bubbling up again to take it’s natural place at the surface. At least Jimmy HAD begged. But not enough. It could _never, ever_ be enough.

“Did doggie forget about his owners for a minute?” The question was whispered, like before, but now there was more to it than the sexual overtones. It was sharper this time. More dangerous. On the other side of the door, sounds of a cheerful crowd echoed distantly, all life outside the room carrying on without a thought for them.

“Did he forget about his _poor drunk mommy_ whoring herself out to the richest man she can find? Did he forget that he might as well not _exist_ to her? Or to this _family?_ Or to _anyone?_ …But I remember. _I remember everything.”_

His impulse to leave Jimmy high and dry had, somehow, against his better judgement, been overpowered. Call it a mistake. Call it a temporary lapse in self control. It had happened, lost somewhere between the smell of Jimmy’s sweat and the sweet, keening pitch of his pathetic begging voice. It had been too much. It was done. It didn’t really matter. He could work with what he had. But he knew he couldn’t just give James a gift and then call it quits. Not today, the one day that could make or break them. He couldn’t give the other boy the dignity of thinking he was _special_ , somehow. Gary’s rock hard condition had settled down somewhat by this point, but lingered disconcertingly at half-mast as he touched a scabbed knuckle under Jimmy’s thick chin. He grinned, a fat cat with a juicy bird in his teeth.

“If you think that I’m ever going to let you forget about this, you’d be even _stupider_ than you look _right now.”_

It was a sincere promise.   

 

**JIMMY  
**

 Jimmy felt a rush of cold air prickling the skin of his thighs as Gary loomed in upon him. It may have just been the heat leaving his body in mass exodus as Gary's face once again filled his vision, his eyes flashing and burning with almost fanatical hatred. It was a face he'd seen in repeated nightmares over the past year, as often as he'd seen the face of a few moments ago in wet dreams.

Jimmy felt uncharacteristically unable to rise to meet him—in part because his legs were still jelly from what was admittedly an _incredible_ orgasm. But mostly it was a spiritual depletion, a kind of nakedness that went beyond the literal pants around his ankles and extended to encompass who he was as a person. His face laid bare his feelings of betrayal, eyes searching Gary's to find the punchline in this cruel joke, before it twisted into a more familiar expression of fury. But not at Gary. There was no more point in being angry at Gary for hurting him than there was in being angry at a tiger for mauling a zookeeper. Gary was just fulfilling his nature, doing what his body told him to do, which was to hurt others as much as he'd been hurt before. Jimmy was furious with _himself_ for allowing himself to be opened up in this way, for engineering his own defeat and humiliation, for seeking oasis from his fucked up life in someone who was incapable of feeling anything beyond his own pain.

The painful, angry silence there could have stretched for millennia. Instead, it was broken by a soft knocking at the door, and then the click of the lock as the handle turned.

Jimmy dove aside to hide behind the door as it swung open. Gary was less fortunate; knocked off balance by the door, he stumbled into the shaft of light made by its opening. Hurriedly Jimmy got to his feet, gathered the fabric of his pants and yanked them up. He was fumbling with the buttons as the door swung closed again. The light clicked on, and Jimmy looked up from his trousers, blinking in the brightness to see the dark shape of Gary Sr. standing between them.

He felt his heart beating in his mouth as the cold glance of his new stepfather swept between them. Jimmy and Gary, who just a moment before had seemed like warring gods in an eternal dark, were reduced to disgraced and shameful children fumbling in a coat closet. Jimmy's face burned and he was unable to meet either Gary or his father's eyes. Instead he felt his stepfather's eyes burning on _him_ , and on Gary, as his gaze swept over Jimmy's disheveled shirt and misbuttoned pants, the red mark on Gary's neck. No one said anything until Mr. Smith said in a quiet voice,

"Will you please leave us, Jimmy."

 Jimmy's mind was blank with terror and humiliation. He quickly tucked his shirttails back into the front of his trousers and slunk through the door. Only when he stepped out into the oblivious party and the heavy door was swinging shut behind him did he look back into the room. The door seemed to take an eternity to close, through the shrinking crack he beheld the tall straight back of Gary Sr. and the white moon of Gary's face turned upward toward his father's, marred only by the the cut on the side of his mouth. Gary's eyes were already dead. He'd already withdrawn to somewhere inside himself. A last safe place, when all other safety was gone.

 

 

The door hadn't yet clicked into place when Jimmy Hopkins burst back through and barreled his stepfather to the ground. As he went down he took a sharp elbow to the face, glancing off his nose with an audible crunch and into his eye-socket, blinding his right eye. But nothing short of unconsciousness could uncouple Jimmy from his body. He clung to him, his hands balled in Gary Sr.'s shirt where they had been on Gary's the night before, straddling his shocked, prone form. Jimmy heard his own voice screaming, but only faintly, as if from miles away,

"I'm your son too now _dad_ , you gonna beat me too? You gonna beat the shit out of me too? Oh please _daddy, please_ beat me too!"

He felt like he was watching what was happening from a room inside his head, through the windows of his eyes. He saw blood and spittle pouring from his nose and mouth onto Gary Sr.'s terrified face. He briefly lost vision in both eyes as he took another hard blow to the head on the left side, then again on the right, as his stepfather tried to beat Jimmy off of him. But Jimmy clung there, shaking him in a pile of choir robes until he was physically lifted up, up, off of the prone groom. As he was forcibly removed from the room by a crowd of party guests he could hear a clear voice laughing through the ringing in his ears, but he couldn't tell if the voice was Gary's or his own.

The next sensation Jimmy registered was the feeling of wet, gritty concrete beneath his knees and palms. He'd been thrown to the ground on the church steps, a crowd of frenzied wedding guests barring him from reentry. He tried to scan them for Gary, who he'd lost along the way. But something was still off in his head, and he couldn't distinguish one face from the next. Slowly he got to his feet, wobbling slightly. He grinned around at the cloud of faces, his face wet and raw with secretions, eliciting gasps from the delighted and scandalized.

Then the crowd parted, and one figure came forward. In Jimmy's depleted vision she seemed surrounded in a soft white halo as she approached him, her arms outstretched to embrace. He heard rather than felt the sharp crack of her hand across his face, the wedding band cutting across bone. Cradling his cheek, the fog in his vision cleared and he saw his mother's eyes filled with hatred, embarrassment, disgust. He spat a thick wad of blood onto her perfect white shoe, then turned and wobbled off into the Vale.

 

 


	3. Swimming Pool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to school.

**GARY  
**

 

September dawned wet and stormy. New England weather had never been especially sunny, but as the new semester rang in, a kind of meteorological stupor settled, in the form of a depressing blanket of gray. Every morning brought with it a fine mist of chilly drizzle, and every evening the turning oaks were whipped with a chilly, insistent wind.  Even the prefects, usually steadfast and unbreakable, bustled up and down the stone walkways now with scarves pulled tight up against their cold-chapped ears.

 

Dark rumors whipped across the campus, that month. Gossip was a steady stream to accompany his return. A constant, low grade muttering followed Gary everywhere he went. It followed him to and from the Boy’s Dormitory as he moved his things from his old bedroom to a new wing in Harrington House. It followed him to the cafeteria where he sat alone. Or even worse, when he sat with a cadre of the snotty school boxing team from Glass Jaw. Whispers even followed him out into the town. They breathed down his neck as he tried on different coats in the long mirror at Aquaberry, or when he stood in line to see a movie. Greasers muttered behind turned shoulders as he ate a bleeder burger on a park bench. Teachers passed him packets of makeup work with pinched mouths. Everyone whispered. Everyone wondered. Everyone talked right up until the moment he came just a little too close, and then would abruptly stop. They swallowed their mutters, turning to stare at him with hawkish curiosity. What would Gary do next? The looks seemed to question everything. They were voyeurs of his discomfort, watching as if he were still unstable. Like a freak at the freakshow, a curious unknown spectacle of sorts, they waited. They stared at him like he was about to do something spontaneous and insane at any moment. Like start a fire. Or pull a knife. Claw somebody’s face off. Old, trite pranks, Gary thought. The thing was, he didn’t have to do any of those things. He barely had to open his mouth. The rumors had already done the work for him. 

 

Because rumor had it that Jimmy Hopkins was losing his mind. 

 

The summer had been long and hot. After the wedding, Gary senior and Mrs. Hopkins, now freshly dubbed  _Mrs. Smith_ , had immediately departed for the Swiss alps. They would be gone for the duration of the season, and had left specific instructions both with the Smith family housekeeper, Mr. Meadows, and with Crabblesnitch himself, about how exactly to care for the remaining brothers.  Primarily, the first direction had been to keep them apart. This point Gary had readily agreed upon, and went along with it accordingly. He was still wading through what could only be described as a  _garbage barge of conflicting emotions_ about their little closet debacle, and he hadn’t quite figured out yet if he was more furious or amused. Sometimes, he thought that it hadn’t been funny at all. Other times, especially late at night, more ambiguous feelings haunted him, and he would recall the sharp exhalation of relief he had breathed when Jimmy had throttled back through the closing door. Dwelling on it had a way of tattooing his face with an uncomfortable frown. It  _always_ made his head hurt. So he didn’t like to think about it. 

 

 Gary had only seen Jimmy once since that fateful wedding day. It had been at the house, around front where a chauffeur had pulled into the drive and Jimmy’s few suitcases were being thrown into the trunk. He was being kicked out of the main house. That much was obvious. Exiled back to school campus, possibly this time forever. Gary had spotted him through the second story window, eyes tracing his face, running tracks down his body, observing his posture, his attitude…  _anything_  to clue him in on how the lunkhead was handling excommunication. To say he had looked  _-less than good-_  was somewhat of an understatement. James stood defeated at the door, his head bowed in uncharacteristic exhaustion. His nose was broken, and his right eye had swelled shut into a deep and radiating purple. Injuries inflicted on him by Smith senior. Or maybe, just from his own stupidity.  He had been shoveled into the back seat just like his ratty belongings had been shoveled into the trunk, and then he was gone. 

 

The months leading up to the beginning of the new school year dragged by in an unintelligible gray stretch. Gary didn’t even have the heart to torture the in-home tutor his father had procured. (okay, maybe just one of them. The second one had a stronger constitution.) It was mildly refreshing for the tomes being slammed on the table in front of him to be about Shakespeare or economics, instead of medical journals, or essays about sociopathy filled with highlighted paragraphs. Gary read voraciously, if nothing else about his life inspired the same enthusiasm. Shut up alone in his reclaimed bedroom, he poured for hours over different disciplines of thought, though he preferred trigonometry and Russian literature the most. The books Jimmy had destroyed sat in an orderly stack on his bedside table. He looked at them as he laid in bed at night before sleep, and he dreamed strange dreams for the first time since going off his medication. He was Iago. He was Macbeth. He was Bazarov.

 

By the time he was signing off on his re-enrollment papers in the main office in front of a grimacing Mrs. Danvers, Gary had returned almost completely to his usual self. A summer of sunlight and regular nutritious foods had taken the gaunt out of his cheeks, and his hair was finally shiny again, lying in organized plaits now instead of greasy strands. His old uniform fit him exactly, he was surprised to discover. He had grown taller, but not wider. The extra length in his shirt was negligible as he tucked it beneath the belt of his pants. He was whole again. Free…  _Right_.  

 

Except, of course, for the problem he didn’t want to think about. The problem he hated, and that consumed him. Every time he thought of Jimmy, a stormy black wall rushed up to fill his head with an electric crackle. 

 

 

 

 

“ _So_ , old chap, how do you like your  _superior trappings_?”

 

Bif leaned casually on the mantlepiece by the fire in the common room of Harrington house, lingering ever faithfully (another dog with another purpose) by Derby Harrington’s side. Derby sat grinning in an armchair just to the left of the fire, Gary stuck to the cushions in the right. 

 

 “Ever so much more  _choice_  than scrambling around in that  _dirty trough_  of a dormitory, eh?” 

 

Gary’s expression was blank as he drummed his hands on his knees in the flickering fire light. Ever since his return to Bullworth, rumors of what had taken place that day at Saint Jude had spread like wildfire. The story had it that Jimmy had attempted to secure his authority upon threat of Gary’s return by kicking the ever living shit out of him. It had failed when Gary’s father had broken up their vicious fistfight and both boys had been grounded until the school year began. It was a passable cover story, Gary thought. It would have been better if the rumor twisted so that  _Gary_  was the winner, but he supposed out of all possible outcomes he could have fared worse. He was already feeding into the gossip by redirecting the story that way anyhow. It could only be a matter of time. And the endgame of Gary climbing back into a position of authority had been augmented nicely by the rumors. Derby personally had done quite a bit to substantiate the story by vouching for what he had personally seen.

 

It seemed that the preps were feeling restless under the white trash thumb of their heavy-handed leader. They wanted Jimmy  _out_ , and Gary’s return had placed him in the advance position of already immediately being  _in_. To say that he was king of the preps wasn’t  _quite_ accurate, but to say that he  _wasn’t_ also wasn’t entirely true either. Again, it was only a matter of time. The world readjusted itself back to it’s proper angle, where people listened when Gary spoke, and where things made sense.  Gary was one of them, after all. Even if they had never wanted him. 

 

Not to mention that they  _certainly_  wouldn’t be looking at him adoringly right now if they knew about the hormonal depravity which had led directly to Gary wiping cum on the wall of a church.

 

Bif chuckled nervously when Gary didn’t reply. Derby sat forward instead, covering the faux pas with confidence.   

 

“At least you won’t need to be so  _dreadfully_  close to that filthy Hopkins!” Derby’s loathing dripped from his tone, confident that trash talking Jimmy was the one thing that would bring Gary closer to him. “Honestly, how could you  _stand it_  before? He smells like a pig in shit! And I absolutely dread the thought of what the  _thread count_  on his wretched sheets must be.”

 

Gary looked sharply up, his eyes settling hawkishly on the tall blonde. Everyone was stupid, but cruel and stupid was doubly unattractive. If he couldn’t be clever  _and_  mean, he shouldn’t even bother with either. 

 

“Thinking about stretching out on  _good old_  Jimmy-boy’s sheets?” He questioned sweetly, though the bite wasn’t unheard beneath. “I thought you didn’t like using anything that’s already been used by someone else.” 

 

“Ugh, of course not! Who would even want to touch that smelly pauper? I  _tremble_  at the mere notion. And honestly, who would even deign to bend down that low?” 

 

It had two meanings, like all the rest of Derby’s condescending wordplays. A hiccup of a smirk flashed across Gary’s face. Jimmy WAS exceptionally short. Too bad it didn’t stop him from doing things like… for instance…  _throwing a person off a roof._ Biff nodded fervently by the mantle, and Gary’s eyes flashed between them.  His smirk vanished. He had met a lot of hypocrites in his life, but these two locker room fops were definitely in his top fifty. 

 

Carefully, Gary uncrossed his knees and settled an ankle on his thigh. “Because what Hopkins is doing is  _so much more disgusting_  than paying teachers off or visiting the locker room late at night?”

 

“Exactly!” Biff supplied, then immediately fumbled at Derby’s sharp look.  He took a menacing step forward instead, his extreme height and broadness working intimidatingly in his favor. He was the Glass Jaw champion, (or, at least he HAD been before Hopkins) and Derby’s selection of him as reigning butt boy definitely had good reasoning. 

 

“I mean, err, absolutely not!” Biff backpedaled. Ok, so, he was strong, but not exactly the brightest. “I  _insist_  you apologize to Darby this  _instant_!” 

 

 Derby groaned again from the chair and rolled his eyes, looking away with the wave of the hand. “Will you SHUT up already? Or better yet, go oil the gloves in the downstairs sports supply walk-in like a good boy.”

 

Biff looked lost for a moment, then hurt, then finally dutiful. He shuffled off in sullen silence, and briefly, Gary experienced a moment of appreciation for just how whipped Derby kept his dog. It was a moment of appreciation which lasted exactly one moment, and then it was gone again. The overwhelming obnoxiousness of being in close proximity with Derby Harrington in any incarnation was annoying enough all by itself.  

 

With a sudden intake of breath, Gary also stood. Derby looked disappointed, as if he were being deprived of a special treat, feeling the departure before it was even announced. 

 

“I’m going for a walk too.” Gary supplied coldly. He turned on his tidy oxfords and left, not bothering to look back. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was twilight. Not that the time really mattered. Not in this weather. Gary regarded the lukewarm grayish color of the sky and chaffed his shivering arms a few times, before walking down the stone steps and onto the school roundabout. He didn’t like people, as a general rule, so he had taken up a scan of the perimeter every evening just as students were settling back in from the chaos of afternoon classes. He liked the freedom. He liked the way people skirted him, giving him the wide walkaround as he strode purposefully through campus. People were nervous of his presence, clearing a path for him like a king parts a crowd.  Sometimes during his walks, he liked to pretend that the last year simply had  _never happened_. As time passed, Happy Volts began to recede back into his mind as a place he understood in theory still existed, but that he couldn’t accept any other way. He had tried his best to burn away thoughts of that place over the summer by filling his mind with more productive things. Math equations. Chemical reactions. Grammar. But as his body chemistry changed and dreams finally returned, he had learned the distinct displeasure of having nightmares about the asylum on the hill. He had woken up in a cold sweat by now at least a hundred times. He dreamed of teeth that were needles, and rapidly decaying bodies, and being left alone. It terrified him. And then it fascinated him. And then it disgusted him. 

 

Gary walked uncaring through the center of a game of hopscotch, scattering the crowd of young girls with cries of dismay. Always, his brain returned now to the one thing he wanted to think of even less than his time at Happy Volts. He thought of Jimmy, and the look on his face as he had wrestled Gary senior to the ground. He thought of the face he had worn before that, too, desperate betrayal painting his eyes with a beautiful despair. Gary thought that he had wanted to crack James. He had wanted to torture him until he understood the ramifications of everything he had taken. But the tone of his voice, furious and revenging as he clobbered Mr. Smith right in the face, returned to bother Gary on a fundamental level. Again and again, he thought of that day. It scratched at him. It tickled uncomfortably, and unsettled him, like a loose tooth that wouldn’t just come out already. 

 

 The sound of eggs hitting metal pulled Gary’s eyes up from the pavement. He stood by the wall across from the Shop parking lot, and there, in the distance, as if summoned by sheer willpower alone, was Jimmy Hopkins. The Northrop boy was there too, his messy blonde hair and obnoxious voice carrying with a vengeance. They dropped deep shadows as they shuffled casual tracks back and forth across the asphalt, taking turns flinging raw eggs hard into the broken down school bus. Nobody was watching them. Nobody cared. 

 

Gary stopped in his tracks, his hands loosely stuck in the pockets of his khakis. He, surprisingly, didn’t immediately feel irritation upon seeing Hopkins, which was his normal reaction. Now, he felt something more surreal. It was odd to look at someone he had spent so much time thinking about, and yet had been kept so far away. He wondered if Jimmy’s nose had healed straight, or if his father’s elbow had only served to enhance the unpalatable bluntness of his stupid face. From a distance, he seemed alright. He seemed… more or less…  _undamaged_. 

 

Gary frowned, the now perpetual expression taking up residence  _once again_  on his face. If he was starting to feel sorry for Jimmy Hopkins, he would  _personally_  readmit himself.

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

"So I say to him, 'baby, that's showbizness.' Then I put on my sunglasses and exit stage left. That's the end of Act 1! Incredible, right? Can you believe that?"

 

"Uh huh," Jimmy grunted, hurling another egg to splatter against the grimy bus siding. 

 

"Wait, you  _can_  or you  _can't_  believe that?" Trent stopped mid-throw and frowned at Jimmy, turning the egg over and over in his palm. 

 

"Jimmy, are you even listening to me or what? You don't even make it to my show so I do you the honor of this here private retelling, and you're too busy throwing eggs to even listen?"

 

Jimmy let out a long sigh and turned to face Trent, but was having trouble coming out with an apology that sounded sufficiently sincere. Trent shook the greasy hair off his forehead, then crossed his arms in a wounded huff.

 

"Something's up with you, Hopkins. All the other kids have been saying it. I been defending you! I put Fatty Johnson's head in the toilet for saying he heard you up all night crying in your room."

 

"Trent, I would be impressed for you defending my honor, but you once gave Fatty a swirly for blinking too much."

 

"It was distracting!" Trent yelled, throwing his arms up and walking around in a little circle of disbelief.

 

"I'm just messing with you, man. Thanks," Jimmy said, and gave Trent a fatigued little grin that put a small flush on the blonde boy's acned cheeks. 

 

"Whatever," Trent said, shrugging. He was suddenly fascinated by the egg in his hand. "I'm... we're worried about you, man."

 

"Me?" Splut, another eggshell dripping down rusty yellow metal.

 

"Yeah, you. Where were you all summer? Did you even leave your little lighthouse fortress?"

 

Jimmy shrugged, bending down to open up another carton of eggs. He wasn't about to spill his guts to  _Trent Northwick_  about it... but yeah, he'd spent more time than usual in the lighthouse this summer. It was just easier than being on campus. Too many people, too many eyes on him, too many mouths whispering lies and recycled rumors. Even the few people on his side were too much. Petey's anxious eyes following Jimmy's hunched shoulders as he shuffled around the dormitory became too much to bear. Even Zoe's silent regard made Jimmy's skin itch. So he retreated to somewhere he knew he woudn't be seen, where he wouldn't feel compelled to answer the questions his friends weren't even audibly asking. Where the only whispers were the susurrations of the waves licking the shore while the rest of the town slept and Jimmy's eyes traced patterns in the lighthouse ceiling.

 

So he was probably, "technically," depressed. Whatever. It wasn't a big deal. The wedding was just another shitty event in Jimmy's life, which was itself a parade of stupid, shitty events. It wasn't worth talking about, not to anybody. _Especially_  not to Trent Northwick.

 

But even the fact that it wasn't worth talking about wasn't worth talking about. And Trent was trying to be nice in his own endlessly stupid way. So Jimmy changed the subject to the one he knew Trent would never tire of—himself.

 

"Hey man, don't worry about it—I'm here now, right? So get on with the story already. Act 2, the curtain rises—"

 

Trent's eyes lit up, his worries swept away as Jimmy knew they would be when the conversation turned back to his "actor's craft." He launched into the next scene with renewed gusto. Jimmy tried to keep the wince off his face as Trent recited line after line of truly horrible dialogue. A Galloway original production, by the sound of it. Satisfied that Trent was comfortably lost in the flow of his own story, Jimmy returned to his earlier ruminations, punctuating them with the sound of breaking eggs.

 

He hadn't seen his mom or stepdad since the day of the wedding. Their only communication had been through intermediaries at Gary's house and through Crabblesnitch at school. Not even a postcard from Switzerland or wherever the hell they'd gone. He wondered almost every night if she knew what had really been going on in that room, or if she believed her new husband's bullshit. It's not like he wanted to  _tell_ her, necessarily. What could he say? Sorry mom, the reason I beat up my new daddy is because he caught me fooling around with my new brother in the choir room? 

 

Of course, he could just tell her the truth—her hubby was a scumshit child-beater. There were plenty of nights in the lighthouse when he'd put pen to paper to tell her just that in his own blunt, childish hand. But he'd stopped every time. Not because he was worried about her not believing him, or showing it to Gary, Sr., or anything like that. That would have been a relief. It was her just  _not giving a shit_ that he wouldn't be able to take. He'd write "Dear Mom," and suddenly his head would fill with her voice, giving excuse after excuse after excuse.

 

"He'd a strict disciplinarian, James. You could have used someone like that growing up."

 

or

 

"Can you blame him, with a child like that? Gary's lucky to have been allowed to grow up at all, with a personality like that."

 

or just

 

"I don't care, Jimmy, he takes care of me. He's a good man."

 

The floor of the lighthouse was littered with pens Jimmy had snapped in half before he'd written a sentence. It was no use. He knew her. She would  _always_ take the side of whatever shit-head she was with over her own son. She would always put herself over everyone else, even the abused, even kids. Once, in a fevered, angry fantasy he had imagined Gary Sr. hitting  _her,_ just so she could experience what it was like to be betrayed by the person who was supposed to protect her. He'd given himself an Indian burn that lasted for weeks after that, stunned and guilty over his own malevolence. 

 

"Jimmy!" Trent's face suddenly filled his vision, eyes concerned.

 

Jimmy blinked a couple times, then squinted up at Trent. "What, what?"

 

"I don't know, you just looked really upset." Trent ran his hands over Jimmy's arms and shoulders, flipping his greasy hair off his blotchy forehead. 

 

"Listen, I understand. I know this part of the play is pretty scary. You don't know if I'll be able to finish that big screenplay  _and_  rescue Sofie Vergara from the Chinese mob  _and_  be back in time for the big premiere. But just stick with me, buddy. It'll be fine."

 

Trent smiled down arrogantly at Jimmy, and Jimmy managed to return the smile with a minimum amount of bile rising in his throat. Trent chucked Jimmy's chin condescendingly, and Jimmy balled his fists to keep from smacking his hand off his face. But Trent stayed close, his eyes taking on a familiar glint. Suddenly, he leaned in for a kiss.

 

Jimmy kept his mouth closed for a second before relenting to Trent's "romantic" gesture. For some reason it just felt easier not to fight it, even though it was pretty much the bottom of Jimmy's to-do list. There wasn't a hint of stirring in Jimmy's pants, which had unfortunately been a relatively constant state of affairs for the past few months. He hadn't even masturbated in a week, probably, whereas he was normally at least a twice-a-day man. 

  
Trent seemed to be having the opposite reaction, unfortunately, as he pressed himself closer and closer into Jimmy's body. He was completely oblivious to Jimmy's lack of interest, and actually lifted Jimmy's arms and placed them around his own hips as if Jimmy was just shy and he was doing him a favor. Jimmy rolled his eyes and tried not to yawn into Trent's open mouth. He tilted his head slightly to scan the parking lot for some excuse to get out of this situation, when his eyes lit upon a familiar figure. 

 

Jimmy broke the kiss to lock eyes with Gary, and felt his own cheeks suddenly flush red. Trent kept licking at the corner of Jimmy's mouth, biting his ear, generally writhing around him, but Jimmy's attention was lasered in on Gary's inscrutable face. He felt a rush of blood to his cock that had absolutely nothing to do with Trent's attempts at filthy nothings he was whispering in Jimmy's ear.

 

Even though school had been back in session for a few weeks, he hadn't seen Gary in person since the wedding. He'd been instructed by Crabblesnitch to keep his distance, and Jimmy had been more than happy to oblige. But that didn't mean he didn't see Gary in other ways. He visited him in dreams often. His face loomed in close, pupils blown wide with lust and anger as he strained to see in the dark room. 

 

Jimmy had half a mind to keep going with Trent, just to see if it provoked any kind of reaction in Gary. But he quickly wrote that off as petty, girlish. Gary wasn't his fucking  _ex_ , he had no reason to be jealous of Jimmy fooling around with another dude. And besides, what's the best that could come from that situation? Gary walking off disgusted, and then Jimmy having to give Trent a begrudging blow job behind the garage? He decided instead to use Gary as an out.

 

Gently he disentangled himself from Trent's ungainly form, eliciting a thoroughly unattractive whine of protest. 

 

"Sorry babe, I'll catch up with you later," Jimmy said, already walking toward the brick wall Gary leaned against. 

 

"I gotta catch up with my  _brother._ "

 

 

**GARY  
**

  

The indignant look on Trent’s pimply face was  _almost_  worth the cost of standing still long enough to be noticed. Gary noted the way the blonde was half-turned towards them, his eyes trailing sadly after Jimmy’s jean pockets in a vain attempt to see through them. But when Jimmy mumbled something and Trent’s eyes rolled up to settle on the distant figure, Gary felt his face twitch into a grin. Trent’s slackjaw frown transformed quickly into a stupidly oblivious expression of alarm and disgust. This was  _totally_  worth it, now. If Jimmy Hopkins, reigning king of Bullworth Academy and hero to all he surveyed had decided to give  _Northwick_  the brushoff in favor of the _basketcase-in-residence_ , it was one hundred percent worth the awkward conversation he would no doubt be having in a minute. Jimmy’s sneakers shuffled up to meet Gary’s, and at long last, they regarded each other again face-to-face. Where had the summer gone? 

 

Jimmy looked irritated. Though that was nothing particularly new, a little line pinched his brow now into a frown that Gary had seen on his own face a hundred times over the summer. Otherwise, James appeared relatively normal. (If you could call someone with a face like a boulder ‘ _normal_ ’.) His nose had healed straight, giving no sign that it had been broken at all, much less by the furious elbow of his stepfather on his wedding day. What did the kicked dog think of that? A little part of Gary was sad that he had missed out on the pathetic state Jimmy must have been in, after. The weeks of cold compresses, the lingering smell of icy-hot. Or maybe even just a fat, bloody t-bone steak right to the eye, in typical mutt fashion. The healing process must have made him hiss with pain when he laid his head back, the pressure of his own blood thudding so hard in his skull that it would keep him awake at night. At least they had  _both_  been awake  _together_ , at separate ends of their respective cages.

 

Suddenly disgusted with his own thoughts, Gary felt his tongue go dry. Why did he give a _shit_  about what Jimmy felt? OR thought? THINKING was NOT in the Hopkins wheelhouse. This whole unfortunate debacle was more than enough evidence of that. They stared at each other awkwardly, and the silence stretched on and on, eventually to a painful length. Neither one of them seemed to want to make the first move, though neither one of them would back down either. Jimmy’s glare kept ghosting down at the cement, while Gary’s scanned the horizon beyond the redhead’s bulky figure. 

 

Trent still stood in the distance, staring at them. He looked gobsmacked, if not totally scandalized. That kid had a mouth on him, didn’t he? Smith’s lip curled in a minor snarl at his impetuousness. Did he assume everything belonged to him? His hands certainly liked to… wander. Didn’t he realize that he was merely a part of Jimmy’s much, much larger collection? He stared now like he had no concept of his place. It was intrusive. And it was _rude_. 

 

Maybe it was Northwick and his ungainly haughtiness. Maybe it was because Gary had spent far too much time alone in his life. Or maybe, for the first time, there  _was_  no ' _real meaning'_. But suddenly Gary’s irritation bubbled over and he slung a sharp elbow around Jimmy’s neck, yanking him in hard. With incredible tact, he turned his face at the slight angle needed to briefly bury himself in Jimmy’s neck, sweeping his tongue up and behind his ear.  It was a brief and delectably aggressive maneuver that left anyone who had seen it questioning if that was indeed what had actually happened. It might have been a private whisper... or more likely, a  _clipped threat_. Either way, it left Trent’s mouth slightly ajar as he lingered by the broken down school bus and it ended in the same manner, regardless. Gary shoved Jimmy roughly away again by the jaw, sending the bulky teen tottering wildly out for a few steps before he righted himself again with a furious twist.

 

Jimmy coughed until his face turned red and looked around, a hand rising instantly to smack the side of his neck. “ _What the hell_ , Gary?!”

 

Gary tongued the roof of his mouth. Jimmy’s neck was salty with sweat. Disgusting. But he _had_  spoken first. Small victories.

 

“Did you  _miss_  me, Jimmy-Boy?”  He replied with bitter relish. Rolling his eyes once, he turned on his heel and began walking down the path again, expecting his obedient dog to follow.

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

As Gary strode off, Jimmy thought to look back at Trent, his hand still clamped over the slime trail of spit Gary had left down his neck. Trent was regarding him with an open-mouthed look of confusion and horror. Jimmy resolved himself to do some serious damage control later. He could interrogate Trent, maybe with the help of a spare bit of wood or a baseball bat, to help establish exactly what Trent  _thought_ he'd just seen. Because  _surely_ he hadn't just seen Jimmy's nemesis, would-be-murderer and newly-minted stepbrother  _licking his neck,_ like Jimmy was the last chocolate chip cookie and Gary was  _claiming him._ That would be  _fucking preposterous_.

 

"What the fuck are you looking at?" he yelled furiously at the gawping bully, and Trent actually jumped before scurrying off in the direction of the garage, his previous arrogance and amorous advances gracelessly abandoned as the old scales of power righted themselves. He'd probably get the shit beaten out of him by greasers for transgressing on their turf, but his only other option was going past Jimmy. An option he wisely abandoned.

 

Jimmy had to jog to catch up with Gary as he strolled off down the path. As he caught up to him he realized his hand was still clasping his neck almost protectively. He jerked his hand back down into a fist, and the hot skin there tingled as it met the autumn air.

 

"Have you lost your  _fucking mind?"_  Jimmy hissed. Gary ignored him, his face plastered with a self-satisfied smile. He had a lot more to say about Gary's fucked-up PDA or whatever the hell he thought he was doing back there, but Jimmy didn't dare go on with that sentence now. Kids were scurrying out of their path, leaving them a wide berth, but almost all eyes were on them as the mismatched pair made their way around the school. 

 

They must have looked a pair. Though Jimmy looked murderous, Gary was the picture of smugness as he walked the Bullworth grounds; a teenaged prince surveying the kingdom that would soon be his, as soon as he put a knife in that pesky king. The thing that really pissed Jimmy off, though he would die before he admitted it, was that Gary really looked the part. Now that he was back at Bullworth and there was a good six months of good food and sunshine between him and Happy Volts, Gary was more straight-backed and self-assured than ever. If you were an idiot, and most people were, you'd have no clue where he'd been, or what he'd been through. But to the trained eye, Gary's face was sharper, more defined from having gone through the ordeal of the asylum. The ghosts of that place lingered in shadows on the edge of his cheeks and under his eyes. Of course they only served to make him more handsome, seem more capable and adult. Only when Gary grinned and showed the gap in his teeth did he visibly betray the off-kilter boyishness that secretly made Jimmy's stomach flip. 

 

Jimmy, on the other hand, barely looked a day over fifteen on a  _good_ day. Even when he drew up beside the taller boy, he had to walk a little faster than usual just to keep pace with his stride. It wasn't that Gary was particularly tall; it was just that following, walking at someone else's pace, just wasn't something Jimmy was used to anymore. He hadn't made a habit of it since, well, since around the time Gary had thrown him into a pit with the school's resident behemoth and encouraged him to pound Jimmy to a paste. The little burn in Jimmy's calves, that extra little inch he stretched to put his heel down with each step woke a kind of physical nostalgia for autumn nights now years past. As Jimmy's little coal eyes surreptitiously regarded the buzzed nape of Gary's neck, he realized with a pang of annoyance that it hadn't even occurred to him  _not_  to follow Gary. It hadn't really been an option; his body just  _went,_ like a released rubber band returning to its natural form. Gary went, Jimmy followed. It disturbed him to think that patterns and memories like this still lived in his body, after everything.

 

Seeing Gary now—despite the anger that had burned in him for months after the wedding, a _re you happy now, do you feel better_ echoing unexpectedly between his ears as he fell asleep, causing him bury his face in his own pillow in embarrassment and rage—seeing Gary now had those feelings of betrayal fading into the background as he felt a welling of suppressed loneliness. As emotionally fucked as Gary was, he was also the only person Jimmy felt like he had commonality with anymore. The only one who knew what had really happened in that closet. The only one who maybe, just maybe, could give him any news about his mom.

 

He was about to ask if Gary'd heard any word when he realized that it wasn't only kids' eyes that were on them, but prefects were starting to notice them too. Crabblesnitch had probably instructed the brutes to watch out for them. Up 'til now they hadn't so much as seen each other, so there was no reason for a prefect to interfere. But they probably had strict instructions to keep the two of them apart, and they were always more than happy for an excuse to make Jimmy's life miserable. He could hear one of them cracking his knuckles as he strode toward them across the quad.

 

Jimmy grabbed Gary's elbow and dragged him to a halt, spinning him halfway to face him. 

 

"Gary, we gotta talk. Just not here. Meet me in the pool house tonight, 9 o'clock."

 

"Oh, so you  _did_ miss me," Gary purred, causing Jimmy's face to flush a ruddy red. God _damnit._ Why was it he'd heard practically the same bullshit from Trent two minutes ago and nothing? And now this asshole says three words to him and he's a fucking tomato?  _Get it together, Hopkins._

Jimmy shoved Gary away from him just as the nearing prefect broke into a jog. Jimmy flipped Gary the bird, then turned it on the prefect, then back on Gary one more time for good measure before he beat his own retreat, hopping a nearby brick wall. 

 

"Hey!" the prefect called, but Jimmy was already gone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jimmy sat on the diving board, dangling his stubby legs over the pool. His shoes and socks were discarded on the wet concrete, and the reflection of the water made swirling patterns on his exposed calves, his slacks rolled up over the knee. It was 9:05.

 

He had a couple weapons stashed in locations around the pool room, in case Gary decided to flip this on him and sent an ambush of preps instead. He knew not to put shit past Gary, and had scoped out the building and planned accordingly. But somehow he didn't think it would happen this time. Call it stubbornness—or, Jimmy thought bitterly, call it faith. 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

Perhaps one of the largest problems he had encountered to date, was that Gary Smith did not like being told what to do. It was the reason he had spent his too-long lifetime tonguing his pills and later privately flushing them down the toilet. When doctors asked him questions, it made him fall silent. When they said nothing, it filled him with torturous words to fling their way. It made him go upstairs when his father told him to stay downstairs. And it  _certainly_  now did not encourage in him any strong feelings about doing something that Jimmy Hopkins,  _of all people_ , had demanded that he do. The unmitigated gall of the order could have almost been funny, if it hadn’t been so fucking annoying. 

 

Gary stood in the dark. He was just outside of the gym and blended in perfect stillness into the soft-edged shadows that cut across the wintery ground. The usual rabble that filled the courtyard during the day was absent, leaving only the dull, distant thrum of passing traffic. An icy wind shook the tops of the ancient trees, dead leaves fluttered through the air, along with with a fine mist of rain. Somewhere, the prefects were beginning their nightly rounds, and that patrol ended directly where Gary now stood. He knew he needed to go into the gym, that Jimmy was  _waiting_  for him, for better or worse… and yet… a single problem kept him rooted to the ground. His hands flitted anxiously up and down the wooden toggles on his navy pea coat, buttoning and unbuttoning, then buttoning again, making sure all was tidy and secure. He had  _thought on_  bringing a bodyguard of sorts with him. He SHOULD HAVE brought Bif. Or even Chad, who had a slightly meaner glint to his eye that Gary liked. But he hadn’t brought Chad, deciding at the last moment that someone else’s company might delude them into thinking they could be friends, and  _that_  was  _even more_  repulsive than the idea of engaging in potential fisticuffs with the school neanderthal. Really, the thing was, Gary just didn’t like fighting. He didn’t like the physicality. It was too brutally uncivilized, and he had always, above all else, primarily been a thinker first. Gary had boxed because his father boxed, but after taking a hit to the face too young and too hard so that his eye would forever display the scar, he had stopped his weekly daytime training sessions at the Glass Jaw. Now he went alone to run drills late at night, and never to spar. He COULD fight. Jimmy knew that better than anyone, despite either of their relative levels of preference for the activity. But then, what would have been the  _point_  of trying to procure James as a faithful dog in the first place? Why fight when you could just get somebody else to do it for you? It was the tidiest option, by far. 

 

Gary’s problem was stiflingly straightforward. He… simply…  _did not have_ a plan. 

 

He had milled over it all evening, even after instantly deciding that he would go after the angry prefect from earlier had demanded he ‘ _stay away from the Hopkins boy!_ ’ Gary had tried to convince himself for a good hour that the prefect was why he had chosen so readily to do what Jimmy asked. After another hour, that mantra became the same thing as truth. 

 

  
_Meet me tonight_ , James had barked.  _9 o’clock_.  Like it was a showdown or something, and he was an old fashioned cowboy. It was idiotic, really. Or WORSE, like it was some  _stupid date_  Hopkins had ill-advisedly conjured up after a summer of solitary jerking off.  _Nobody_ went to the Pool House. Not even after they had managed to scrape the rest of that one missing kid out of the filtration system and refill the pool. The likelihood of this being an invitation to a fight was  _vastly_  more plausible. It was definitely the more understandable out of the two options. Gary’s jaw clenched, and he thought again of the thing he didn’t like thinking about. The feeling of Jimmy’s hardness thudding in his hand, the way the redhead had practically  _whimpered_ , and the  _hard rush_  of power which had come after that… it was a memory Gary hadn’t figured out yet how to entirely eradicate. It made him oddly uncomfortable, like he had committed a crime he hadn't been aware he had been committing. It wasn’t GUILT, per se. It wasn’t even shame. But it WAS…  _something_. Something undefinable. A million molten hot showers hadn’t even done the trick to alleviate the tension, despite just how  _hard_  he had  _really scrubbed_ … (Would he  _ever_  be clean enough again after that night?) And now as he stood rooted to the pavement, he wondered if punching Jimmy wasn’t the better option. Despite everything. Despite being alone. Despite his revenge plans, or their parents, (THEIR parents, God, what was this world coming to?) or anything else he could conjure up as a good reason to take these new plans more slowly. Gary  _needed_ , in a deadly serious way, to somehow shed himself of this  _nasty little case_  he had developed of  _Obsessive Dwelling_. It was  _distracting_. And he DEFINITELY had better things he could be doing with his time than milling around and thinking about jerking stupid Jimmy Hopkins off, or stupid Jimmy Hopkins jerking himself off. He felt filthy with it, like he had been infected by something ominous and unsavory. The thoughts vacuum sucked to his brain, refusing to leave him alone. 

 

The ugly truth of it was, those thoughts had led him exactly here. To this exact spot, standing pointlessly in the dark, like he was somehow  _afraid_  of the  _one_  person he was _absolutely sure_  he could  _never_  really be frightened of. Gary didn’t like unexplored territory, but even he wasn’t delusional enough to think he wasn’t standing in the middle of it, right now. This was dangerous. He would need to wing this. But that was all there was to it. Thank God he was at least a thousand times smarter than good old Jimmy-boy could  _ever_ be. 

 

Further down the path, the distant flash of a prefect’s flashlight cut through the misty dark. Gary glanced over his shoulder once, his face expressionless, before tossing his moist hair out of his eyes and pushing quietly through the Gym door. 

 

 

* * *

 

  
    
As Gary took the black path past the locker rooms and came up the stairs into the dark of the empty Pool House, he saw that Jimmy was sitting on the diving board. Distant light from the ancient campus gas lamps shone in through the high windows, and it cast the water in an eerie blue. As the taller boy walked slowly up to the edge of the pool, he ran his eyes across the surface, and up to where the reflected glow painted the underside of stupid Jimmy’s jaw with a drifting light. He was alone... Was that intentional? Being king had  _certainly_  granted him a fleet of willing lackeys. Someone like Russel would have been exceptionally useful in a situation like this. But then again, James hadn’t become king because of his  _exceptional cleverness_. Either this was extremely poorly planned, or Gary didn’t know what it actually  _was._  Yet. 

 

He took a contemplative step forward, shoving his hands in his coat pockets and looking at Jimmy with cautious puzzlement. 

 

“Can you even  _swim_??” Gary broke the silence, his voice echoing off the tile. “If you’re _trying_  to drown yourself and need a witness, I’d be happy to hold your head down.”

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

 

"Heeey, bro. Good to see you too," he sighed, his broad face holding a sardonic smile that teetered on the verge of grimace. He placed his palms on the rough stucco of the diving board and rotated his body so that his legs were hanging off the long side of the diving board, facing Gary at an angle, but not making the move back to the pool edge.

 

The kind of fucked up thing was that Jimmy actually had been thinking about drowning, in a way. Not, like, planning it or anything. Just thinking about it in a numbly curious kind of way. Thinking about how pissed Crabapple would be if not a couple months after they finally refilled the pool, another dead kid got stuck in the filter. 

 

The pool was the only light source in the cavernous room, and it lit Gary's face a wary green. Standing as he was in partial shadow, Jimmy couldn't see him too well. But something about the way he held himself betrayed tension that Jimmy hadn't been expecting. Maybe he was anticipating an ambush of his own. Maybe he was signaling to snipers in the rafters or something, whatever. Seeing Gary a little uneasy made Jimmy feel a little better, a little sturdier on his feet, so-to-speak. But it also made Jimmy do something really weird, which was to pat the diving board beside him with a heavy hand, gesturing for Gary to come sit beside him. 

 

The motion came from the impulse of Jimmy's that got him in the most trouble, ultimately—more than his vandalism, more than his violence, more than his almost pathological hatred and distrust of authority. It was the part closest to the heart of him, the part that desired balance. It was the piece that fueled everything else, if he thought about it too much, which he usually didn't. Making sure the deserving got what they deserved, the rich robbed, the poor fed, all karmically of course. Gary was just so confusing because he was both the richest and the poorest person Jimmy had ever met. It confused his intuitive sense of justice. But right now the scales seemed micro-tipped in Jimmy's favor as he watched Gary shift uneasily from foot to foot. Even as he knew cosmically they were swinging back into Gary's. Right here, in this room, he saw somebody—his stepbrother—trying not to look kind of freaked out, and it spoke directly to the motor that moved him. 

 

He shifted his weight forward and brought his elbows onto his knees, kicking his feet slowly back and forth. His big toe just barely touched the surface of the water, and it dragged little circles that rippled outward into the center of the pool. There was a muted anxiety in his hunched shoulders, his lazily kicking feet. His stomach was starting to mimic the water, lightly churning.

 

He stared at his hands clasped between his open knees and addressed Gary without looking at him. He didn't know what his face would betray if he looked too much at Gary, even in the dim light of the pool room.

 

"So... heard from mom or dad lately?"

 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

If Jimmy addressing him as  _'bro'_  was cause enough to roll his eyes, Gary did so ten thousand times harder when the redhead gestured for him to sit at his side. The taller boy stayed irrevocably motionness, stuck to the floor at a safe distance. Nobody needed to even  _look_  at the pool to know that in simple terms of weight alone, Jimmy Hopkins on top of  _any person_  would equal immediate drowning via human carbuncle. Gary wasn't stupid, but that was, by far, one of the stupidest suggestions made to him thus far over the new school year. 

 

The standing boy snorted once, choosing instead to take a step in the opposite direction. "Come on, moron, really?" 

 

Did James  _really_  think he could coerce his enemy into such an easy trap? Right, sure. It was almost funny, in a way. What kind of suggestion even was that? Because what it _seemed was_  completely thoughtless. They  _weren't_ brothers. They never would be. Gary narrowed his eyes in suspicion. Were they in a secret club together now or something? Is that why they were supposed to sit together? Or, was this  _actually_  a date? 

 

  
_That_  thought doubled back again with force, causing Gary's frown line to tighten. His eyes traced the wobbling light spilling up from the water as it highlighted odd contours of Jimmy's face. He seemed tired, and yet somehow also... confident? That in and of itself wasn't an expression Gary particularly enjoyed seeing on his rival's face. James always looked much better when he was mad. Or  _sad_. Yeah, he thought again after a beat,  very, _very_  sad felt the best. So, what was with the casual attitude? Were they supposed to sit on the diving board and stick their feet in the water and... then what? Talk about their  _feelings_? Would Jimmy win him a bear at the carnival later? What  _was_  this? 

 

Gary was opening his mouth to state unquestionably  _'you know this isn't a date, moron_ ' when Jimmy's next words beat him quickly to the punch. There was a resounding silence.  

 

Had he heard anything from...  _their parents_??

 

So THAT'S what this was about? Gary's lips were poised half-open, his tongue suctioned to the roof of his mouth as his previous expectations burned away. What was this feeling he was experiencing now? Indignation? 

Or, was it...  _maybe_... something a little closer to disappointment?  _That_  disconcerting thought quickly wiped the entire slate clean, replacing everything wholesale with anger instead. 

 

" _One_ , they're not YOUR mom and dad." The taller boy drew a pale hand out of his navy coat to point loosely at Jimmy's stupid face. "She's YOUR mother, NOT mine. MY father is the one paying for everything. And  _Two_ , why would you even  _think_ -?"

 

He stopped himself abruptly, curling his pointer finger back in. The fist clenched and he shook his head once, as if to clear an excessively stormy thought. Had he just been about to ask a Hopkins what he  _thought_  of something? He let loose a clipped sigh and continued.

 

"...Clearly, you don't get it, Jimmy-boy. I don't know HOW you don't get it, considering my father  _broke your nose_ , but obviously something didn't settle in. So let me spell it out really, _really_  plainly for you, ok?"

 

No letters had come. Not over the summer. Maybe not ever again. No phone calls, no quickly scribbled notes, no third party stories. Gary had been abandoned again, like he had been abandoned at the asylum. This was it. The end of the line. Gary was back at school, in perfect honesty, only to save family face. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else would ever be as important as the name. Gary thought of standing in front of his mother's portrait with a distant tickle of hurt and shame, and then he dismissed the feelings again entirely. If  _he_ was screwed, then Jimmy getting caught with his pants literally around his ankles was a definite death sentence.  

 

"They,  _abandoned_ , us!" The youngest Smith pronounced the words a little too loudly, as if speaking to a deaf person, or a small child. With a frustrated huff, he threw his hands up in the air as if to shrug the whole subject off. Why did Jimmy want to  _talk_ about this? Did he _really_  care what his whore mommy was up to? Hadn't he already been dumped by her once before too? Twice?  _Three times_?? How many schools had he been sent away to again?  _Why_  wasn't he  _used to it_?

 

A silence stretched out, in which Jimmy glared at the water and the taller boy folded his arms roughly across his chest. They lingered together in thought. When Gary finally spoke again, his voice was quieter. And maybe,  _just maybe_ , very slightly nicer. Not  _kinder_ , but... less harsh. They weren't in this together, but they weren't exactly  _alone_  either. 

 

"...So, just... forget about them. I already did."  

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

What Gary said was right, of course. Which was why it hurt so goddamn bad. His mom had abandoned him more times than he could count. The hours he'd spent without her had surpassed the hours he'd spent with her before he was five fucking years old, and the scales just kept tipping as he got older. Time after time she'd flown off and dumped him somewhere—on a relative, a school, or onetime on nobody at all. Just left him in the house for two weeks one summer without a note, without any money. It was the first time Jimmy'd shoplifted, at the tender age of seven. And he was hardly seven anymore. He was technically almost an adult now, so why did it still hurt? Why did he still give a shit when she sailed off without a word?

 

Because this was the first time there really had been  _no_ word. Her last statement to him had been made with her hand, the first and last of its kind. She'd never hit him before—and now, Jimmy  _knew_ , she'd never talk to him again. The echo of their last encounter lived in a tiny scar on his cheek where her wedding ring had struck his face. It was so small it might not even be there at all; he fully realized he may have just imagined it. That didn't mean he didn't search for it every time he looked in the mirror.

 

But when Gary ended on his insistence that he didn't care... well, suddenly he wasn't right anymore.

 

Jimmy lifted his eyes to meet Gary's for the first time in a look that was fearsome as it was stubborn, the eerie shadows of the pool light deepening the dark red circles beneath his eyes. 

 

  

"Liar," he said, his voice uncharacteristically low. 

 

Suddenly it was clear as day, clearer than it had ever been before. Gary cared, alright. Gary cared  _a lot._ Jimmy felt like he was seeing him for the first time. He was just another abandoned kid, hurt even worse than Jimmy had been. He'd been forced to develop some  _real_ fucked up armor, and it didn't excuse anything, but his shit came from the same place. They were the same. Damaged goods, fucked over by selfish adults who never should have had kids in the first place. 

 

Jimmy slowly got to his feet, toes dripping on the white stucco, red ankle hair clinging dark and wet to his skin. His eyes still locked with Gary's, he stepped off the diving board toward the lurking teen. His mind was blank with determination, with the single, bloody-minded idea that he  _knew_ and that  _Gary was lying._

"You can't honestly say to me you forgot about them. About my mom, maybe. But about your dad? No.  _Fuck_ that."

 

He took another step forward, his body between Gary and the pool. He wanted to shake Gary, force him physically if he had to, to admit that he was fucked up by everything too. That Jimmy wasn't  _alone in this._

  
_"I_  can't even forget your dad, and he only beat me  _once_."

 

The sound of flat wet feet slapping across concrete mingled with the echoes of his voice, pitch and volume raising in anger as he rapidly closed the gap between them. 

 

"Admit it, Gary," he said, thrusting one short, thick finger roughly into his perfectly buttoned peacoat.

 

"You haven't forgotten  _shit._ "

 

**GARY  
**

  

Jimmy's suddenly close proximity raising his hackles, Gary stood completely still, as perfectly motionless as a marble statue and just as immovable. He let the other boy invade his personal space and the scent of chlorine rushed up with him, though the dangerous look he condescendingly peered down his nose with said more about how he felt than words could say. A blunt finger jabbed Gary obnoxiously in the chest, and his lip curled up a little at the side. 

 

"So what?" He asked the question plainly, meaning every syllable. "Who  _cares_  if I forgot about them or not? You think just because my daddy didn't  _love me_  that I'm gonna cry over it now? You got hit once and so you're  _obsessed_  or something? You need to relax, _friend_. I've got  _much_  more important things to think about. But you and  _this_  bullshit? _Blah blah blah._  Really, Jimmy, It's all pointless. You want your mommy to come kiss your boo boo's and make them better? Well  _too bad_.  Forget about it. You're on your own." 

 

A final thought significantly darkened his expression. "...with  _me_."  

 

God, that was true, wasn't it? What had he done to deserve this? (Okay, Gary had done lots of things to deserve this. Maybe too many things.) But the fact of the matter was, stupid James had hit the nail on the head, in a sort of fucked up roundabout way. He had said it himself. _Mom and Dad_. He'd said the words like they were already one and the same in his mind, linking them unbreakably together. That meant that  _he and Jimmy_  would be together. For a  _long time_ , possibly. Maybe even past high school. What if their parents decided to send them to the same college? Jimmy's IQ meant relatively nothing in the face of the vast Smith family fortune. It wasn't impossible. They could theoretically be shackled together for maybe even  _the rest of their lives_. It was a cold jolt of a thought. He remembered the prickle that the scars on his back had made for months after being thrown through the skylight. He remembered doctors at Happy Volts looking at those scars and making fun of him as if he wasn't even in the room. 

 

Blood thumping in his ears, Gary's ominous glare took another turn, this time for the much worse. He curled his right hand around Jimmy's finger and pried it away, exacting too much force than necessary. 

 

"Or is it that you just  _can't_ _forget_ about your  _poor,_   _sweet_  mommy  _taking it_ from a Smith?" He used Jimmy's hand to both pull him closer  _and_  inflict pain with the severity of the angle, whispering his threat with a darkly sensuous tone. His face angled down towards Jimmy's angrier one, until the tips of his bangs almost brushed the top of his skull. 

 

"That seems to be a problem your family  _keeps having_."

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

 

 

"... _with me._ "

 

The words were clearly meant to chill, by their tone and the darkening of Gary's expression. And they did—evoking images of torturer and tortured alone together in a narrow cell, or of a captive being locked in and left to die with a particularly strange, particularly  _hungry_ cellmate. But chilling as they were, they didn't effect Jimmy the same as they would have just half a year ago. Because now Jimmy was already cold, and already alone. In a supremely messed up way, Gary's threat was the one thing Jimmy was waiting to hear from him, and his body released an imperceptible sigh of relief. Everything leading up to it, the monologuing about how worthlessJimmy was, how pathetic and pointless, was overshadowed by the admission of togetherness—no matter how fucked up that togetherness was. When you'd been cold and alone for long enough, you started to crave even cannibal companionship.

 

His train of thought was broken by a bolt of pain as Gary savagely twisted his finger back. He swore, and suddenly Gary was much closer. Gary's cruel face looming down at him, the pool light sending a greenish aurora across his devil grin, it was almost too perfect a recreation of the church. It should have been a warning; Jimmy's crazy aunt used to say, "if you don't listen, the universe turns up the volume"—and the swirling green light amplified the malevolence in Gary's features, his face an even grimmer version of the one that had haunted Jimmy's dreams these past months. The sight of it should have recalled the feelings of hurt and humiliation that shocked him to his core when Gary had mocked him in one of his rare moments of vulnerability. He should have reeled backwards, or at the very least reeled forwards and smashed it into smithereens with his thick rhinoceros skull. 

 

But the universe and all its volume apparently had nothing on the hormones of a teenaged boy. Gary's proximity, the challenge he perpetually posed—even the searing pain in Jimmy's finger had thrills of excitement coursing through his body. He had to suppress a shiver as Gary's bangs brushed his forehead. His brows still furrowed in Cro-Magnon anger, Jimmy's wide mouth twisted up into a grin. He tolerated the pain of Gary's torture, showing no hint of discomfort on his face as Gary held him in check. Power through fortitude, but also making sure Gary knew he wasn't scared of a little pain. He even leaned in, pressing his hand a little further into the painful grip, their hands a mocking inversion of a lover's grasp.

 

"Gee, I don't know, Gary," Jimmy said, his voice now light and airy as he angled his face further up. "To me, it kinda sounds like  _you're_  the one with the problem. I just wanted to talk about mom and dad, and all of a sudden you bring up fucking?"

 

He cocked his head to the side, black eyes glinting in the dim, swirling light. "Something on your mind?"

 

 

 

**GARY**

 

What  _wasn't_  on Gary's mind was probably the better question. But then, had there ever really been a time when he  _hadn't_  been plagued with the burden of hyper awareness? His whole body seemed to burn with it now. Jimmy's strained breathing on his collar. The temperature of his hand. His idiotic stubbornness, and the lingering scent of chlorine mingling with dried sweat. Gary took it all in, his brain working overtime to come up with a suitable next step. His usual mantra of focused torture seemed oddly less important in the face of this argument. What more could he do that their parents hadn't already done? He just needed to assert himself. Or...  _did_  he need to torture Jimmy a little? A cacophony of possible outcomes zig-zagged dizzily in an impossible circle, making his hand clench tighter, pulling Jimmy's elbow up at a sharp angle.

 

The ex asylum inmate cut loose a hissing chuckle through his teeth. "Is something on  _your_ mind? Or, I'm sorry, are you just copying me?"

 

Over thinking was both Gary's greatest curse, and his hugest asset. He took it steady turns where it would both torture him and spur him on. Gary's mind raced now in favor of the latter, louder and faster in frequency than he might have preferred, but he  _needed_ _it_  to stay on his toes for this. It was _too important_  to win, now. He didn't need to set Jimmy on fire, but he needed to put him in his  _place_. He wasn't quite sure  _why_ that was, but it just... was. _It just was_. He didn't even like letting Hopkins getting one over on him in any regular situation, much less after everything that had happened. Things were uncomfortably different now, so the win felt equivalently pressing. Why was Jimmy  _still_  trying to fight? What purpose could it serve? Didn't he see the futility in it? He hadn't thrown a punch, but it was still there, all over his face. The taller boy smiled an ugly smile back down in return, almost admiring the resistance that met him. Stupid, stubborn dog. Jimmy's face burned with challenge, and there was some small thrill to that too. He recalled that same face flushed so similarly with lust even in the dark, and Smith pushed a knee forward to shove the other boy's feet apart.  

 

"I didn't come here to make you  _feel bette_ r about your gold digger mom. So why do  _you_ think I'm here? Really, give it a try. Rub some of the few brain cells in there I  _know_  you have and try to come up with a possible explanation. It might hurt at first, but just... keep at it. I bet if you  _tried_  that you could come up with something  _really_... masterful. You want to fuck with me? You wanna fight me? You're going about it _all wrong_ , moron."

 

Fuck. What was he saying? Gary felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck, beneath his thick wool coat. And yet, after he'd said it, he understood himself with perfect clarity. He knew exactly what he really meant before he had even personally acknowledged it. He needed to change course. The taller boy's hand loosened it's grip, though it didn't release, instead sliding down to circle around Jimmy's wrist like a spider lazily ensnares a cocoon it had already made. 

 

"You know why I think  _you_  asked  _me_  here? I think you asked me here because you're pathetic. Yeah, that's right, isn't it? You want me to mess your face up a little bit because you don't want to face the reality. You know what that is? You can't  _stand_  the idea that _I'm back_. Or that you're  _out_. Off your throne AND out of mommy's house. Well, face it, Jimmy-boy,  _I'll_  be the king, and  _you'll_  be all alone waiting by the mailbox for postcards that will _never_  come. So you might as well just get on your knees right now and get it over with."

 

Gary's hand tensing again for the quickest of moments was the only warning Jimmy had. Jimmy had to  _understand_. He needed to  _see_...  _Why_  couldn't he  _see_?

 

" _Here, let me-- help_ \--!" With a mighty shove, Gary jerked back and pushed Jimmy as hard as he could, sending the heavier youth tottering straight back and into the pool with a righteous splash. 

 

But then something he  _hadn't_  anticipated took place. The thrashing sputters that followed up the cannon-like impact effected Gary with an odder twist than he ever thought possible. Watching Jimmy flounder, the completely unexpected mood swing hit him hard. He started to  _laugh_.

 

At first, the sound was the cruel hyena shriek of rivalries past. But much to Gary's own surprise, it slowly began to even out. He barked the laughter with a strange airless feeling of relieved exultation, as if he were exorcizing some ancient demon after keeping it locked away for far too much time. And even after that, the sound changed again, echoing loudly off the cold tile walls. He seemed to laugh through his own shocked misunderstanding and at long last went,  _finally,_  straight on to the deep-stomached mirth of a totally  _normal_ teenage boy. What was happening to him? When was the last time Gary could even _remember_  laughing, much less like  _this_? It defied all logic, and yet, it felt  _unreasonably good_. By the end, the sound wasn't even mocking, only genuinely entertained in a way Gary that couldn't (or  _wouldn't_ ) fully comprehend. The fit finally died entirely with a ripple of amused giggles when Gary squatted down by the edge of the pool. He settled his arms on his knees and flashed the gap in his teeth at Jimmy in the pale green light. 

 

"Who's the boss now?" the grinning boy asked, for the first time (possibly  _ever_ ) without a single hint of cruelty.

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

Jimmy hit the water flat on his back, the air rushing out of his lungs in a solid whoosh. It took him a few moments of panicked underwater flailing before he clawed his way to the surface, Gary's laughter muffled in his water-logged ears. He gasped and spluttered his way back to the pool edge, and in his panic smacked his palm down on the concrete so hard it made his skin tingle. Wiping the chlorine from his eyes with the hand that wasn't clinging for dear life, he turned his face upwards to level Gary with a glare.

 

The prick was practically doubled over with laughter, because  _of course he was_. But now that the frantic pounding of his heart was receding from his ears, Jimmy registered a difference in the sound that was echoing throughout the cavernous room. Gary laughing at his misfortune was nothing new, but there was a new quality to this sound, something Jimmy really couldn't put his finger on. It seemed somehow... unburdened, when he had been expecting unhinged. Sort of light, free. Almost happy. It made Jimmy's heart beat a little faster, for reasons other than his recent near-drowning. It lifted something in him, even as the sodden sweater and shirt and slacks that floated and clung around his limbs made him heavier, dragging him down.

 

Of course, that didn't mean Gary got off the hook for being a  _dick._ Spouting enigmatic stuff about why he came here in the first place, then bashing Jimmy for not understanding him. Well how the fuck was a guy like Jimmy supposed to understand Gary? Gary was  _crazy_. He did crazy shit, like press up between Jimmy's legs and then throw him in a pool. Jack him off and then yell at him about it. He was confusing and infuriating and borderline-sadistic and god, Jimmy was so totally, _totally fucked_  because now he was leaning down and grinning at him with that gap-toothed smile and Jimmy wanted nothing more than to crush his mouth against Gary's until neither of them could breathe, and  _not_ because one of them was drowning. 

 

"Who's the boss now?" Gary asked, and Jimmy actually opened his mouth to say  _you_ before he caught himself, heart pounding, like waking up to find himself sleepwalking off a cliff. Gary's face closed slightly as his eyes ran over Jimmy's face, apparently puzzled by Jimmy's sudden open-mouthed pause, and his legs began to straighten into standing. Panicked that Gary had somehow discerned his newly-discovered, secret and horrible devotion, but too dumbstruck to think of an acceptably witty retort, Jimmy responded the only way he knew how—with good, old-fashioned violence. He hooked his free hand around Gary's ankle and pushed off the side of the pool with his feet, toppling Gary out into the pool. 

 

 

 

**GARY**

  

From the bottom of the pool, Jimmy's legs beat distantly above, making sharp bubbles against dark green shafts of faint light. The brief, insane thought that Gary had been biding his time until James finally killed him made this new and sudden turn of events somehow bizarrely understandable. This was where he  _belonged_. He had never NOT been here.  _Of course_  this was how it would end. Happy endings didn't exist, and neither did justice. Not in the world that had thrown Gary so many times under the bus. Into the cold. Into the trash. This was a nightmare. The fearful neurosis sucked the air out of him harder than the shock of hitting the water, and in a sputtering thrash Gary kicked off the floor and shot back up towards the light. 

 

Breaking the surface with a gasp, Gary's sense of reality returned  _hard_ in tandem with the air pouring back into his constricted lungs. He gasped like a drying fish for a few muddled seconds, looking around himself in confused waves as he attempted to keep above water. The taste of chlorine filled his mouth and burned his throat, pulling cough after wet cough out of his suddenly FREEZING body. Holy shit,  _this_  was why people weren't swimming in the pool, wasn't it? It was practically  _ice water._

 

Across the cold surface, Jimmy's voice shot out and surrounded him. Gary's shock ebbed slowly away as he rapidly blinked pool chemicals out of his blurry eyes, and he thrashed in a semicircle until he spotted the other boy a few feet away. Jimmy was grinning hard between self-satisfied snorts chin deep in the water, his base and unintelligent reaction filling the room with a robust sound.  _Laughing_ , Gary realized after a moment. He was _fucking laughing_.

 

"That's what you get, asshole!" 

 

"Yeah, ok...  _screw you too_ , moron!" Gary spat, though the words didn't hold as much of their usual venom. In fact, the sound of unbridled laughter was slowly beginning to summon a strange and opposite effect in the taller boy. As if experienced by someone else, Gary felt his own face beginning to crack at the corner. Water trickled past his lip and into his mouth as he began to grin, somehow unbelievably, in earnest. A button was still a button, right? The mantra returned. Like Jimmy's grin at the church, like the twinkle of wetness touching his face... it was all consumable. Every powerful reaction, every aggressive emotion... It was all...  _wanted_. Gary's heart thrummed in time with his arms, the thick wool coat he wore dragging him perpetually down. With a breathless bark of surprised laughter of his own, he finally put himself to the task of swimming. With long, casual strokes, he flipped over on his back and made lazy circles in the dark water, Jimmy's stupid chuckling haunting him pleasurably in the echoing room.

 

They swam like that for an hour. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

By some stroke of luck, the emergency lighting in the locker room was still functioning. In most places around campus other than Harrington House and the main hall, any backup security or even any base security to think of was all broken or relatively useless. Here, at least, there were no security cameras. It was getting darker outside by the hour, and soon even the Prefects would be hanging up their flashlights and shutting their eyes to dream of future police brutalities yet uncommitted. Out of all places to take a shower after an illegal dip in a pool nobody wanted to swim in, this was unquestionably one of the safer options. The narrow room hummed with the subtle sound of electricity in the walls, and everything was bathed in a dull yet functional red. 

 

Garry pulled his sopping coat off and set it on one of the long benches, his gray button-down clinging uncomfortably across his chest. He crossed his arms, shivering slightly in the muted red light, and shuffled over to the row of showers, turning the knob on each one fully to hot. Slowly, the room began to steam, and he returned to the lockers again with a more level head. A swim was all well and good, but catching pneumonia would be a completely stupid way to die after everything else that hadn't yet been able to kill him.

 

"Jimmy," the youngest Smith suddenly barked, an idea striking him sharply. He didn't turn his head as he processed his thought until he felt James at his elbow. Turning, he looked at the shorter figure. The red emergency lighting suited him preposterously well, even if he DID look a little bit like a wet pitbull straight out of the river. Rivulets of pool water dribbled down his neck, and Gary's shivering subsided slightly as that particular distraction more fully overtook him. His unblinking gaze lingered a little too long, until suddenly with a snap he looked away again, and swept a hand majestically out to gesture towards a row of lockers. 

 

"....James!" He said the name again, this time sounding more reasonable than he had any right to. " _You're_  a  _juvenile delinquen_ t. Why don't you put those  _fantastic_  breaking and entering skills of yours to some good use and get us some fresh clothes?"

 

It wasn't an order,  _per se_ , but then again... it  _wasn't not_  one either. What other choice did they really have? Spend the 20 minute sneak back to their respective dorms shivering in wet clothes? It was basically mandatory. And then of course, there was the thrill of telling Jimmy to do something and  _knowing_  he would do it. But there would be more time for that. Gary's gaze swept sideways to study the other boy's face, feeling oddly hot and cold at once.

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

Jimmy frowned at the row of lockers Gary indicated. They were a bit removed from the showers, which made sense, but didn't put them in a particularly appealing part of the room, temperature-wise. The cold wasn't affecting him the way it was affecting Gary—he was sustained by the pleasant heat given off by his muscles after the hour's exertions, and his body was practically a furnace anyway—but all the same, he didn't relish moving away from the streams of hot water now pouring from the rusty fixtures. He was looking forward to rinsing off the thick layer of pool chemicals that had crusted into his open pores, worked their way into the threads of his clothes.

 

Almost as an afterthought, he realized he  _also_  didn't like being told what to do,  _particularly_  by Gary with their _particular_ history. He turned to tell Gary exactly what he should shove in his own "locker," but any protest died in his throat when he registered the look on Gary's face. He was even paler than usual in the chilly basement, his already dark lips tinged with a hint of blue, but a creeping flush touched his cheeks and the base of his throat as his gaze wandered over Jimmy's face.

 

There was probably a lot going on in Gary's expression that could have been interpreted in hundreds of ways by people more perceptive and insightful than Jimmy Hopkins. But to him, Gary's eyes on him were broadcasting just one very important thing. Jimmy wasn't particularly observant about most things, but he was proud to say that his lust-o-meter was robustly healthy. No matter their history, something about getting Jimmy to do shit for him now was clearly turning him on.

 

Jimmy found himself once again at the crossroads between personal pride and the prospect of sexual gratification. As the possibilities wrestled (briefly, feebly) in his mind, his eyes settled on the place beneath Gary's jaw where he'd sucked a stolen bruise so many months ago. He'd never seen it, not really—they were with each other for mere moments after he'd created it, before Gary, Sr. entered the room and everything changed—but that didn't mean he hadn't thought about it an embarrassing number of times. He wondered how long it had taken the broken blood vessels in his skin to knit back together, the colors it might have turned in its (hopefully) slow healing. How long had it lingered on his neck? A few hours? A few days? He'd imagined Gary angrily digging out turtlenecks from the back of his closet, cursing his name. Pulling the collar of his peacoat close around his face, even when there was no wind.

 

"Alright," he shrugged, making a herculean effort to seem nonchalant, and plodded off to accomplish his task.

 

He banged open a couple of lockers with no locks on them just to check and see if there'd be any easy finds, but no such luck—only a ball of dirty socks and a ham sandwich that looked like it been there since well before the pool renovation. He squatted down in front of the first locker with a lock brand he recognized and got to work on the simple machine. It gave him a bit of trouble, and he exhaled impatiently as he fiddled the knob back and forth, listening for the clicks. Finally, he yanked the lock off the door with a self-satisfied "Aha!" and opened the door, the hinges complaining loudly with every centimeter of motion.

 

Jackpot. Tucked inside were a folded up t-shirt and jeans that both passed the sniff test and looked roughly wearable. Beneath that, though, he found a pink v-neck, a lacy white bra, and pink pair of sweatpants with JUICY emblazoned across the ass in rhinestones. He must have stumbled on some unlucky couple's cache of extra clothes. He wondered briefly whose they were, and if they were pre- or post- hormonal fumbling, before turning to hold up the sweatpants in triumph.

 

"Hey, Gary, I found an outfit for ya~" he snorted, his face plastered with a shit-eating grin.

 

"You might have some trouble filling them out, though," he said, indicating the bedazzling. "'Juicy' isn't really a word that comes to mind when I think of you. Do they make sweatpants that say 'gaunt and miserable' on the ass?"

 

 

 

**GARY  
**

  

"Nice vocabulary use, idiot." Gary rolled his eyes in the general direction of James and the wad of pink cloth in his fist. "Do you even know how to  _spell_  'gaunt'?" 

 

What Jimmy didn't seem to register, and what slowly began to grow more annoying with time, was that Gary's physical condition had actually improved greatly over the summer. Hearing himself referred to as 'gaunt' chapped a little now, after months of examining the way his ribs poked out in his nickel plated mirror. And who again, exactly, was responsible for putting him in the place that had made him that way? The taller boy made a smoky frown, before reaching out and simply yanking the pair of normal jeans up off the floor. Pink was Jimmy's color. It would clash horrendously with his face. He glared at Jimmy once, shattering what before had been a minorly miraculous temporary treaty.

 

Directing attention to the poor condition of his body had put Gary on edge, and he put distance between them now to settle his thoughts. Happy Volts was receding into the distance of his memories, but it still lingered in the cracks even as he tried to expunge it completely. Occasionally, it rose up to remind him coldly of just how far he had really fallen. The jeans hit the floor by the end of the row of lockers and his hands went up to his collar where he began slowly to undo the small ivory buttons. Gary wasn't just cold anymore... he was  _freezing_ , and his unbidden recollections of the asylum did little to dissuade his shivering. He remembered long nights in his icy cell, his glassless window letting in flakes of snow to drift across striped beams of light cast by the security guard. He remembered counting icicles, and thinking that soon he wouldn't even be able to remember his own name. 

 

Gaunt.  _Gaunt.._. If Gary was  _gaunt_  then Jimmy was  _bulbous_. He cast a dark look over his shoulder at the other boy further down the row as James set to picking another lock, for once quietly accepting his defeat. With a clenched jaw, the youngest Smith finally ripped his sopping shirt off, and flung it on the ground with a wet splat. It didn't even occur to Gary to feel nervous to undress for any other reason than paranoia over his own skinny body. He barely even registered anything other than the echoing nightmare of his own bad memories as he whipped his belt out of his pants and shrugged out of them. What he _didn't_  remember was that, most likely, Jimmy didn't know about his scars. They were faint now, pearly white lines tracing a jagged pattern. But when they were still fresh, they had burned every night for months. Glass powder, or some skin irritation like that. 

 

"Don't think too hard, you'll blow a fuse." The skinny boy said after catching a glance at Jimmy's look of squinting concentration as he fumbled with a new lock. And then he was gone, disappeared into the hot mist of the shower.

 

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

"Tou _chy,"_ Jimmy muttered under his breath as he worked open the next lock. Alright, noted—do  _not_ make fun of Gary's ass. Definite mood killer. Who knew baby Machiavelli had a booty complex?

 

 

Jimmy wrenched the next lock off as soon as he heard the final click. And... nothing. A slight panic starting to rise, Jimmy moved down the line of lockers, quickly picking and disposing of the remaining locks. But there was nothing else besides a moldy pair of shower shoes and a couple bottles of conditioner. It made sense, really, since the lockers were mostly for storing clothes while swimming. He'd been lucky to find the first set of clothes at all. But that meant Jimmy would have to figure out how to get the jeans away from Gary. That or attempt to set a world record for fastest sprint across campus with JUICY inscribed across his ass. 

 

It suddenly occurred to him that he was  _freezing._ After this long out of the water, even Jimmy the Human Furnace was starting to shiver. He struggled out of his sopping wet Bullworth sweater vest and chucked it into an empty locker with a resounding splut. It could live there with the ham sandwich for all he cared. He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, his fingers increasingly clumsy with the cold. As he deposited his shirt on the floor, he looked over his shoulder to see what Gary was up to. He'd already disappeared in the cloud of steam surrounding the shower, the selfish bastard. Oh god, it was probably so warm over there... Jimmy suddenly couldn't get his belt off fast enough, and was hop-stepping out of his pants across the tiles toward the promise of heat. His giant head was already under the stream before he hooked his underwear onto his ankle and kicked it across the room. 

 

"Ahhhhh...  _that's_ what I'm talkin about," he said as he felt the hot water flow over his forehead, through the little knife-hairs on his scalp, then cascading over his shoulders and back. The clashing of the hot water on cold skin sent shivers of pleasure arching throughout his body, and he rubbed all over his torso in primal glee. He had a sudden flash of memory, about this nature show with those monkeys that live in the cold snowy mountains that love getting in hot springs. Thinking about their little red faces and butts made him break into a wide grin.

 

He vigorously rubbed water out of his face and opened his eyes, searching for Gary to share his hilarious thought. Gary was nearby, closer than he'd realized, but turned fully away from him—still giving him the cold treatment, apparently. Still, not a bad view, Jimmy thought, his pale eyebrows arching as he appraised Gary's ass. He'd been too harsh on the little guy. It still wasn't "juicy", per se, but it was certainly respectable—call it a healthy handful. Jimmy's dick gave a little twitch at the thought of his hands on Gary's ass, and he moved his eyes away so as not to get himself in too much trouble. 

 

He didn't have to go far, as his attention was pulled in by little marks that started near the base of Gary's spine and traveled upward, across his entire back. Jimmy's first irrational thought was that Gary had been struck by lightning, and it had left these strange, arching scars across his skin. He'd seen something like that once on the internet. Or maybe it was some weird tattoo? He'd never seen Gary naked, after all. Without fully realizing what he was doing, Jimmy stepped in closer and swept his thumb over a particularly raised mark on Gary's spine. 

 

"Hey Gary... what's this?"

 

 

 

**GARY**

  

The unexpected touch shot straight through Gary's entire body like an electric jolt, and he physically balked hard into the side of the tiled shower wall in a half-twist, half-leap. As if someone had physically struck him, the preposterously simple muscle recall flung him backwards, and he recoiled around himself in thoughtless self defense. It took Gary a good lingering second to beat back the instantaneous look of fear which bled plainly across his face. When his somewhat overblown reaction began to ebb, and the irrational tremble faded from his eyes, recognition slowly settled in. Jimmy. It was  _Jimmy_.

 

"-- _What?_ "

 

The question was barked with no little amount of panic. Gary's voice sounded distant to his own ears, like it didn't even belong to his body.  _How_  had he allowed himself to become _that los_ t in his own thoughts? How had this lunkhead gotten  _so_  close,  _so quietly_? Maybe he really  _was_  losing his mind. Unaware, his nerves buzzing suddenly too loud in his ears, Gary's panic became a glare and he looked harshly back over his shoulder at Jimmy from his hard lean. Water dripped from the tips of his mussed bangs and dribbled down his face.

 

  
_What... had Jimmy asked?_  His... scars? Did he really...  _not_  know? Gary's glare became incredulity. Jimmy had definitely said a plethora of dense things in their brief and terrible association, but this time, this might have been the worst.  _What's this_ , he asks? How could that question even begin to be answered? ' _Oh, remember that time you threw me through a window and then they had me committed and it ruined my life? You know. It's from that.'??_

 

And then there was an additional problem. Out of  _all possible things_  Gary thought he would be doing a year ago, having a naked Jimmy Hopkins touching his back in a boy's locker room shower was definitely not on that list. What was this supposed to mean? Was James _actually_  just curious? (He was a confirmed idiot, so that wouldn't be too unexpected.) Or was this something else? If the taller boy had to rate something from zero to gay, this situation had taken a tremendous step away from zero. This wasn't proper locker room etiquette, by  _far_. Who touched each other naked in the shower? Gary recalled in a brief flash the faces of Derby and his own dog, Bif. A surge of insane disbelief overtook him at the thought, as he huddled still against the tile in a half twist. Suddenly it seemed foolish that he  _hadn't_ considered that possible outcome. But, why would he? What was Jimmy to him that would even make him  _need_  to take into account? Hot water poured down Gary's torso as he fought to reign in the quickly spiraling panic that the brief touch had instigated. 

 

When was the last time someone had touched Gary's back? The fact that he couldn't remember any time other than when Orderlies were manhandling him was a definitively bad sign. The fact that  _Jimmy Hopkins_  touching his back had elicited a panic reaction much like being struck by lightning was doubly bad. His nervous glare hardened and with a deep breath that he tried to quietly conceal, he pushed back off the tile with a forearm. Gary looked away again and brought his head directly underneath the stream of hot water. The world briefly melted away in a molten rush of heat and noise, grounding him. A moment later had him pulling back again and slopping his wet bangs back from his face. He  _needed_ to be steadier. He  _willed himself_  back into calmness, though bitter frustration at his own mistake circled around the end.  _How_  had he let Jimmy  _scare_  him? God, he had jumped like a terrified little girl. How had he shown Jimmy that  _weakness_? Was Jimmy really  _that_ frightening? Gary's eyes rolled back up, and he took Jimmy's entire figure in for the first time.  _No_ , he decided after a beat. He  _wasn't_  frightening. He was just James. Just plain and ordinary, freckly Jimmy Hopkins.

 

And he had..? ... _Of course_  he did. Gary's eyes lowered, and his eyebrow shot up. 

 

  
_Red_  pubic hair. 

 

  
_Ok._  Everything was _fine. James was. Not._  Terrifying.  

 

"If you  _don't know already_  then I don't see any reason to tell you, moron. But if you  _think_ about it for a second, you  _might_  just get it. And don't touch me." He glared through the steam. "I'm allergic to stupid."

 

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

One time, when Jimmy was a kid, he'd come across this mangy dog in an alley sniffing through the trash. It was a mutt, some kind of terrier maybe, with wiry little hair and bald scabby patches on its hind legs. He was curious—his mom had never allowed him to have a pet, except for this creepy old cat who hated him and always had dingleberries on its butt. He'd managed to get pretty close to the dog before it realized he was there. When it noticed him, it spun around and began to sniff him, its little tail wagging. It barked expectantly and snuffed its little nose in his hands, licking them, looking for food. He played with the dog all afternoon, chasing it and being chased in the dirty little alley. 

 

 

He didn't see the dog for a few months, but one day when he passed the alley on his way to his third elementary school, the little dog was back in the trash. Jimmy snuck up on it again, hoping to get the jump on it in another game of chase. It spun around again, but this time its eyes were wide and yellow, its little teeth bared in a grimace of fear. Jimmy saw new bald patches, but these were red and raw—they looked like burn marks, maybe from neighborhood kids. Jimmy had his own scars from them to compare. He reached forward to try and calm the dog down and it lunged forward, biting his hand hard enough to draw blood. He'd had to kick the little dog off of him, and it hit the alley brick with a sharp whimper that echoed in his mind even now. Jimmy'd turned and ran before it had a chance to get back up, his face streaming snot and tears.

 

To this day Jimmy wasn't big on dogs. He'd gotten in a shitload of trouble for the bite, and had to go get a painful rabies shot in his arm from a third-rate pediatrician. But he always remembered that mangy little terrier. Lying on the foldout couch that night, he'd rubbed his swollen arm for hours and thought about what would have happened if he'd taken the dog home the first time he'd seen it. It wouldn't have worked, of course; his mom would never have allowed it in the house. But maybe if he'd been smarter he could have hid it somewhere, protected it. From his mom, from those kids, or whatever had hurt it. They could have been a team. He could have changed things.

 

Seeing Gary's face now, he remembered that little dog. Gary's immediate reaction to Jimmy's touch was one of hatred and revulsion, but ultimately, mostly fear. It made the ventricles of Jimmy's idiot heart, his child heart, yearn toward him. But he'd learned his lesson from the little dog. He still had tiny white scars on the back of his hand from tiny white teeth. He knew the hurt that animals could give out of fear. He held his palms up at his shoulders, trying to signal his threatlessness without having to give up too much ground. For some reason, he didn't want to run this time. 

 

He never saw the little dog again, but he did see those kids. He'd followed their leader, a big, zitty preteen named Kevin who enjoyed lording it over the littler kids, back to his double wide trailer and jumped him with a baseball bat. They didn't mess with Jimmy again, at least until he moved away a few months later.

 

He wondered what Gary, Sr.'s face would look like after a few minutes of the baseball bat.

 

Jimmy stepped back under his own stream of water and pretended to be immersed in washing himself while he stewed. Gary said he should know where the scars came from—well of course he should. He hadn't seen his stepdad hit him with his own two eyes, but he'd seen enough to know what happened. The marks on his face, and now on his back. That had to be the explanation. 

 

The corner of his mouth quirked as he remembered the fear in his stepfather's eyes when he'd barreled into him so many months ago. The terror as he failed to beat Jimmy off of him, the blood from Jimmy's nose splattering into his eyes and mouth. He hadn't even hit him, not really. He hadn't gotten  _close_ to what he deserved. Suddenly Jimmy had a reason to look forward to his parents coming back from honeymoon. If they ever did.

 

"Hey, I never found out, exactly... what happened after I left? At the church," Jimmy suddenly asked, splashing warm water up into his armpits, trying to cleanse the hair there of chlorine. 

 

"I mean, your dad must have looked pretty fucked up. Did they get their dance?" Jimmy grinned villainously, imagining their parents slipping and sliding across the church floor in the blood from his own broken nose. It was a grim fantasy, but still. He wanted to know more about the havoc he'd caused, any pain he might have inflicted. If there was a scrap of revenge left that he hadn't heard about, he wanted to know.

 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

How had he  _possibly_  merited all this unwanted attention? The sudden unbidden thought that he had  _no idea what he was doing here_  rose up with a sick force. Gary stared back over his shoulder at James with an expression that was half blank, half scandalized, while water dribbled unheeded down his face. A little distance away, Jimmy's thick back muscles twisted as he rinsed his pits in the dull red emergency lighting. He didn't have any scars on his back, but he certainly did have a surplus in the freckles department. They dusted his skin in a motley pattern all the way down, leading Gary's shrewd stare over his strong, round glutes and along his sturdy thighs until the rest of him faded into shadow and steam. Jimmy wanted to know... about the  _wedding_? Here?  _Now_? The one thing the youngest Smith had tried his best  _not_  to think about in relation to his new step brother and  _that_  was what James asked about now? In the shower? Naked? About the condition of his  _father_?? A painful jolt struck Gary as he realized that once again, the moronic Hopkins boy had thrown him for a loop.  _How_  did that  _keep happening_?? It shouldn't have happened  _once_ , much less multiple times. It was  _completely illogical_. A brief flash of paranoia overcame Gary then that maybe, Jimmy actually wasn't stupid at all... and that,  _maybe_ , he was doing all of this on  _purpose_ , with the direct intent to drive Gary finally and fully insane. Was he trying to put Gary back into the asylum? Was all of this some grandiose master plan?

 

"--did they  _what_?" 

 

But, that was  _crazy_. Gary couldn't decide what was crazier, thinking that Jimmy might be a secret genius, or experiencing a mental state where he would even  _begin to conside_ r a Smart James as being remotely possible. Without fully realizing he'd done it, he took a menacing step towards Jimmy's back. 

 

"I- _I don't_  know...I wasn't there for the rest of it. I'm not  _surprised_ , but you bleed like a stuck pig. It got on  _everything_." Smith's voice trembled with strain as he tried to skirt the line between civility and barely containing his paranoia, edging slowly closer. It wasn't even worth mentioning the threatening ulterior motives his father had later fed him to stay away from James. The cold, disgusted declaration of ' _not MY son._ ' Gary took another distinct step.  

 

"...I guess it was probably kind of gross to dance in a wedding dress with blood all over it. Or a tuxedo, whatever. They were both ruined. Scandalized old ladies all over the place."

 

Why did this dog  _keep coming back_? Gary had wanted to leash him, at first. Then he had wanted to put him down. Now, it seemed like Jimmy wanted to return home, indeed doing so again and again like the faithful fido who goes to lick his master's wounds. Gary remembered with a tight chest the vision of James bursting back in through the closet door.  _Why_  had he done that?  _Why_  had he bothered with a rescue  _at all_? It wasn't his business. _It wasn't his_   _problem_. It not only did him zero favors, but actually put him in the proverbial dog house. Gary certainly wouldn't have done anything even remotely like that in exchange. Wasn't it better to let your enemies fight each other down  _for_  you? Why did Jimmy want to talk about it now? What  _purpose_  could it even have? Why had he called Gary out here, after curfew, in the dark? To do... what, exactly? To metaphorically curl up on his feet? To become  _friends_? Because whatever the cause, it wasn't to fight. Fighting was the only thing that made sense to Gary. It was their logical next step, and yet, it had no place between them at the moment. So, why? It couldn't possibly be just to swim, either. There was a retarded level of idiocy in that, even for James. Did he have a death threat? Was he  _stupid_? 

 

Unbidden, Gary barked one simple laugh, and reached a wiry hand out to grab Jimmy's thick shoulder, pulling him halfway around. 

 

"You definitely botched the wedding with your embarrassing testosterone-riddled display, if that's what you were curious about. Good job. Why bother asking? Unless... did you want me to...  _thank you_  for the  _rescue_?" the proud curve of Gary's nose dipped a little as his eyes traced down. The fingers digging into Jimmy's wet flesh clenched harder.

 

"Don't you think  _you're_  the one who should be thanking  _me_?" 

 

  
_Of course_  Jimmy was stupid.  _Of course_  this was all to fuck with Gary's head. Gary kept forgetting what this was  _all about_. It was about Power. Who had it, and who didn't. He was tired, and he was lonely, but he hadn't lost his edge. Not yet. He  _couldn't afford_  to lose the edge now. Not when he was poised so perfectly for a return to Power. Not when, with just a little push, he could set the gears in motion to the machine that would finally destroy Jimmy Hopkins once and for all. Not when he could finally get his revenge. For everything. The window, the thunderstorm, the riot, for Petey, his expulsion, the pills, his father, the needles, the cold, and for the way this stupid kid with red hair had somehow infected every dimension of his entire existence. Gary didn't want to chit chat and be friends. He needed to get back on top. Gary was  _sick_ , and if he didn't cauterize this wound, it would kill him. Much sooner than he had ever anticipated.

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

Jimmy nodded in satisfaction as he listened to Gary's descriptions, his eyes closed to help picture the detail. Not that Gary was giving him a ton to work with, but still—he hadn't talked to anyone about the wedding since it had happened, not even Petey or Zoe, so he was determined to savor hearing about the only decent part. The blood, the screaming, the embarrassment, etc. He let out a happy little laugh at "scandalized old ladies" in particular. It sounded like some good old fashioned havoc—courtesy of Jimmy Hopkins, professional delinquent and joyful-occasion-ruiner. He almost wished he could have been there to see it. 

 

  

But he was pulled from his reverie by Gary's hand on his shoulder, as he was bodily turned to face the suddenly much closer boy. His body tensed slightly, unsure of what exactly he should expect from the fingers digging a little too hard into his skin. Just moments ago Gary had dramatically recoiled from what Jimmy thought was an innocent (okay, maybe slightly sexually charged) touch—now he was back in Jimmy's personal space, looking down at him imperiously through his dripping wet bangs as if he  _owned_  him. Why was he so close? Was this going to be a fight or a fuck? Gary couldn't seem to make up his mind, and it was becoming increasingly important that Jimmy get on the same page. He did  _not_  want to be the one who brought the dildo to the knife fight.

And then... ah yes. Of course. The closet. Jimmy'd wondered if this was going to come up. Despite Gary's promise that he'd never let him forget about it, Jimmy'd thought that maybe, after everything that had happened... maybe Gary did just want to let it go. Let weird, sad bygones be bygones. Apparently this was not the case. And now he was looking for what, a pat on the fucking back?

 

"Thank you, oh  _yeah_. Thank you  _so much,_ Gary. I loved it when you practically dislocated my shoulder and had me picking splinters out of my face for a week. I'm  _super grateful,"_ Jimmy sneered, and was instead secretly thankful for the dull red light they were bathed in. Hopefully it made his own suddenly flushed face harder to pick up on. It was bad enough that he suddenly found it hard to look Gary in the eye, to the point that he was glaring fiercely into Gary's armpit. 

 

The truth was, he'd thought about their encounter hundreds of times with equal parts lust and anger, embarrassment and hurt. Now, as Gary loomed closer, and with him the prospect of a repeat engagement, Jimmy found it increasingly harder to remember the precisely one million reasons why doing it again would be a  _terrible idea_. For some fucked up reason, since he'd gotten out of the asylum, Gary's presence was like sexual interference, and the closer he got the more hormonal static filled Jimmy's ears, drowning out reason and any memory that conflicted with the immediate possibility of touching and being touched. Add that to the fact that for some reason his depressed libido was miraculously waking up for the first time in months... well, fuck. He could feel the blood starting to flow. He wasn't hard yet, not fully anyway, but... best to hope that the little cloud of mist hanging out around his privates decided to chill there for a little while.

 

Although... there was a way to maybe turn the tables on this, so to speak. Jimmy certainly hadn't forgotten the hardness against his back as Gary'd jacked him off—the few sounds that had escaped from his tight-lipped mouth that weren't vile abuse. The really fucked up thing was that Jimmy probably  _still_  would have tried to get him off, even after the evil shit that came out of Gary's mouth that day. If they hadn't been so rudely interrupted by #1 Dad of the Year. Maybe... just maybe... that was the kind of "thanks" Gary was looking for anyway.

 

Another moment passed as a silent war waged within him. Warm water cascaded down Jimmy's back, pooling in the gaps between the fingers still clamped onto his shoulder. Ultimately, though, one side won out, and Jimmy found himself in the same position he'd been in years ago, when he'd first come to this godforsaken school. Waiting on Gary to tell him what to do.

 

"So... did you have a  _thank you card_  already picked out, or..." Jimmy muttered, trying his best to infuse cockiness into a voice that was wavering around barely audible. The flush on his face could now probably be seen from space, red light or not. And he _still_ couldn't look Gary in his stupid face. 

 

"Or did you have something else in mind?" 

 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

Had  _this_  been the secret, all along? Was this  _base_  kind of interaction  _seriously_  the only road he had ever needed to take to finally get the upper hand? Jimmy clearly always had been, and certainly was now, obnoxiously subservient to his own body's physical demands. He lived in his body like Gary lived in his head, which in retrospect, was probably where their partnership had gone awry in the first place. But it  _did_  make Jimmy easy to read. God,  _too easy_. Annoyingly, embarrassingly so. Gary stared with too much manic intensity at Jimmy's slack face, his fingers digging into his shoulder as he devoured the way the other boy's eyes kept skirting away. Water hit them like rain water, and memories of another night rushed up in a mighty wave to strike Gary sick with regret. He remembered Jimmy's face _that_  night too, and how different it had been in comparison to now. James had looked  _so wounded_ , even as Gary had pelted bricks at his head, hoping to knock him off that paltry scaffolding and down, down, down. He had really,  _really_  wished it... that this frustratingly elusive neanderthal of a human being would never get up again. That he would just  _vanish forever_. That he would, truly, plummet into the rainy abyss, falling like a sack of rubble down to his actual and irreversible death. Gary had  _sincerely wanted it_. It was a wish that had haunted him perpetually afterwards, in the cold and filthy halls of Happy Volts. He had wanted to see Jimmy's blood on the sidewalk because he had wanted to be  _sure_  that _nobody_  would ever be able to tear the Genius Gary Smith down again. Not after so many times. Not Jimmy. Not his father. No one,  _not ever._  But it hadn't worked out like that. Nothing more than the insanity of this moment proved that better.   

 

"You... have...  _no idea..._  just  _how many_  'something else's I've got in mind,  _Jimmy-boy_." 

 

The words breathed out without quite forming in advance in his mind, even as his eyes burned holes into the side of Jimmy's face. He was falling out of his body, falling out of  _his own logic_... This  _hadn't_  been _the plan_. It didn't fit in with any of Gary's previous theories, any of his strategies or expectations. And yet, he recalled sitting in his cell the night after Jimmy's little...  _lapse in judgement_  at the church... and Gary's legs had tingled unbearably. His stomach had refused to settle. He had  _really_  been  _bothered_. It had  _forced_  him to acknowledge his problem, his  _attraction_ , to this _trainwreck of a situation_ , even as his hand had hovered above his own scrubs, lingering with intent to touch and yet never allowing himself to drift close enough to make anything out of those dark thoughts. It had been too personally gross, too ominous, too out of character.... simply put, it had been too _unexpected_. Or, maybe  _unexpected_  wasn't even quite the right way to look at it either? Unexpected suggested that it was a surprise which wasn't entirely unwelcome.  _This_  was unwelcome.  _This_  twist of events did more to Gary than just rattle him. It was beginning to undo him on a fundamental level. It was complete fucking  _insanity_ , if he could ever really legitimately call something that. The sigh of relief he had breathed at his unexpected rescue, the way his nerves had sung with pleasure as they swam in chilly circles... People had called Gary crazy all his life, but he had never  _really_  believed it. Not until this moment. Like a headsman swinging down the axe, Gary understood all at once that his hand was now being forced, even if he liked it or not. They were  _already naked,_  for crying out loud. God, what kind of trap had he fallen into? Had he done this to himself, or had James? Or, had it been the Volts that had finally fried whatever remaining intelligent brain cells he had left? Why hadn't he  _seen this coming_  ten miles away? Did he want to push this because his resistance had finally worn away? Or did he want to use this as a weapon to torture Jimmy later down the line? Ultimately, in the heat of the moment, it then became  _painfully_  obvious that it just...  _didn't..._   _matter_. He was too curious. If he didn't go through with this, at least _once_ , he really  _would_  lose his mind.  

 

"Do you  _want_  me to hurt you? Whatever you're doing, you're  _not_  going to win. It's  _not working_ ,  _moron_." Did he even want to hurt Jimmy anymore?  _Or did he_?? His fingers dragged down to wrap unbearably tight around the hot flesh of Jimmy's upper arm. 

 

His  _intention_ , even as his patience finally snapped, had been to push Jimmy down onto his knees. His  _intention_  was to make him  _beg for it_. In a hard rush that rose up all at once, he imagined spilling hot liquid across Jimmy's battered face. But once again, and no doubt not for the last time, his intention and the reality didn't end up meeting in the middle. Gary thought of his father's bloody sneer, and he surged forward on that impulsive jolt to aggressively cover Jimmy's parted lips with his own. 

 

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

  
_Shit. Shit shit shit._  Jimmy's brain briefly short-circuited as Gary crushed their mouths together. Out of all possible responses, this was certainly the least expected. After the last time, he'd kinda assumed kissing was off the table? Gary had rejected him  _hard_ , and he still cringed when he remembered the look on Gary's face as he'd wiped off Jimmy's kiss with the back of his hand, like they were in third fucking grade. So what made this—now—so different? Was it really just because Gary was the one who started it? 

 

Whatever—Jimmy could give a shit  _why,_ so long as it was actually happening. And it was—kind of. Gary'd taken the first step, but he kissed like he hated it, with his eyes squeezed shut and his nose scrunched halfway up his face. His mouth was surprisingly static against Jimmy's after his initial surge forward, like he wasn't entirely sure what to do next. Jimmy smiled a little into Gary's mouth—he couldn't help it, he looked so stupid—then softened his lips and began licking into Gary's mouth, worrying and pulling at his bottom lip. Warm, coppery water spilled into their mouths as Jimmy coaxed Gary open wider, pulling him in closer with light touches at Gary's hips. Gary had a lot over Jimmy—brains, looks, pedigree—but Jimmy was a damn good kisser, and he knew it.  _Finally,_ some familiar territory. Gary's vise grip on his shoulder slowly loosened as he started to pick up cues in their kiss, and Jimmy yielded to the exploration of his mouth by Gary's tongue, alternately soft and aggressive, retreating then redoubling its advance.

 

Gary's hands were now wrapped loosely around Jimmy's neck as if he couldn't decide whether to pull his face closer or choke him to death. Jimmy hoped to shit it was the former, and with gentle but firm hands guided them back against the shower wall, Jimmy's shoulder blades pressed against the cool tile. He kept his hands planted on Gary's bony hips, not pulling him too close but not letting him get away, and expending considerable strength not to let them wander across his scarred back, his ass, his thighs. 

 

Jimmy was starting to get that  _whatever this was_  with Gary, it would have to be on Gary's terms, at least for now. No surprises, no sudden movements. He felt not unlike a trapper trying to coax a skinny, angry wolf into his clutches. This sort of yielding, pulling, yielding approach was not something Jimmy was used to. Not that he was terribly aggressive, per se, but it was safe to say he was usually the one doing the pressing against walls. But as much bravado as he could spout, Jimmy's ego was not fragile, and he could cope with a little man-handling. In fact, he was kinda beginning to enjoy it—not that he would ever admit to it.

 

Without breaking the kiss—and he  _never would_  if it was up to him, Jimmy had an oral fixation and the lung capacity of a killer whale—he let his right hand fall around the front of Gary's thigh and gently brush against Gary's cock. Gary started, not really forward and not really away, and broke the kiss to level Jimmy with a look as wide-eyed as it was opaque. Jimmy could almost feel him retreating into himself, balancing again on that axis of repulsion/attraction. It was now or never. 

 

With a bit of quick maneuvering he slotted their bodies flush, pulling the head of Gary's cock up to rest in the crease between his pelvis and his thigh. His own dick bobbing heavy against Gary's leg, Jimmy turned his focus downward, blinking off the drops of water that hung on his translucent eyelashes. Stroking the head lightly with his fingers, he angled Gary's cock against the wet, frictive slide of his freckled pelvis and rolled his hips into him. And hell, he couldn't help it if his left hand fell down around Gary's back to give his ass a little squeeze. It was just to keep his balance.

 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

The universe had clearly pre calculated this elaborately cruel joke, because when Hopkins rolled up against him with unexpectedly direct friction, Gary choked on a half-groan that broke their kiss. It was a noise that he  _never_  would have acquiesced to consensually share, and the fact that his fist was suddenly grinding hard into the tile by Jimmy's shoulder was a strange realization as well. When had it gotten there? An odd coppery taste lingered in Gary's mouth, and for once, he couldn't think of anything cutting to say. He couldn't even think of anything  _stupid_  to say, instead listening to a deafening buzz where his usually unstoppable calculations lived. His body felt like it was  _on fire._  God, this wasn't right. It wasn't  _fair_  and it wasn't  _right_  that  _this_  was where he had inevitably ended up. Maybe he really  _was_  crazy. Maybe he had never left that tiny wet cell on top of the hill at all. Maybe he was still there, with his ankles and wrists chained to the posts in the wall. 

 

Gary pressed in hard, shoving Jimmy more firmly against the tile, even as his mouth lingered close to another kiss. He  _wanted_... what  _did_ he want? his lack of resolution taunted him, unsettling the taller boy dramatically as he realized with a start just how  _hard_ this was starting to make him. His breath came harsh as his body rushed with strange feelings, mingling distractingly halfway between extreme hunger and extreme nausea. What was this? Was it good?  _Or bad_? He didn't know, only sure that for the first time he _needed to_  try to figure it out. Somehow, he  _needed_  to end the conflict of his own mind. This nightmare wouldn't end until he could scrape together some sort of resolution for himself, even if that meant tonguing Jimmy's molars in order to get an answer. And suddenly, the Orange Terror's teeth weren't even the most disgusting thing Gary was considering putting his tongue on. He  _was_  crazy, wasn't he? The doctors were right. The doctors had always been right. He had lost his mind. 

 

" _... You... don't..._ " Gary panted too close, too muddled,  _too confused_ , water pouring down unnoticed between them. ". _..but ....you.._."  

 

What was he trying to say? What  _wasn't_  he trying to say? What  _was this_?

 

The jumbled thought went incomplete as the boy decided to abandon it in favor of crushing their lips together again. Gary's hands returned to Jimmy's neck, but this time trailed up to grab his jaw, yanking him closer, harder, faster. It had been a disgusting sensation at first, but the slippery caress of the mouth of Bullworth's Most Prolific Heartbreaker quickly began readjusting Gary's assumptions. Though the intensity wasn't particularly surprising, (how many people had Jimmy made out with in his life? 100? 1,000?) there was a definite difference between seeing it done and doing it yourself. Smith forced the grimace off his face and tried to imitate Jimmy's technique with a businesslike precision, mouthing the corner of the redhead's lips in a mirror of the interaction that had triggered this terrible dreamscape in the first place. He let Jimmy's hands rove, every new inch of unexplored flesh he touched pulling from the taller boy a half-stifled intake of breath.  _That_  was distracting. But he wouldn't let Jimmy think he had the upper hand. He  _needed_  to  _perfect_ his approach.

 

Gary pulled briefly away and a thoughtless arm wracked across his mouth. Beatrice flitted across his thoughts. 

 

"...This... is going to give me... some kind of  _gross disease_ , isn't it? ...You are  _disgusting_ , James." 

 

The panted words were accusatory, but not nearly as cruel as they should have been. Instead Gary just considered Jimmy's wet figure for a few tense seconds before threading his hands back behind the other boy's neck and pulling his throat forward instead, tonguing the hard flesh found there. Less germs... Smith tried to comfort himself with that thought. Though at this point, honestly, it didn't matter anymore. It was  _too late_. So many things had stopped being important. Gary bit down harder, testing his limits. Jimmy was being oddly pliant for once, and it seemed absurd to waste that opportunity. Not that any part of this wasn't absurd. 

 

Now that he was here, Gary didn't want to waste any more of his dignity by pretending he hadn't been thinking about this. Which he definitively  _had_ , of course, for more hours than he could count. Forcing... _noises_... out of him because of this was already embarrassing enough. But it was really just that he hadn't... quite...  _known_....  _exactly_ , that  _this_  was what he had wanted. It hadn't been as clear as it was now, standing under the rushing water and letting himself get washed away. Gary had thought too much about his revenge. About how to exact it, how to torture Jimmy emotionally. Of course, it was about  _power_. It would always be about that. But he hadn't known to what extent it had been about  _this_ , too. How could he have? He  _still_  had no clue what this was. How was it supposed to go? Where would his hands end up? What cadence would his thoughts take later? How much would he hate himself? How much  _more_  would he hate  _Jimmy_? Or, would he? What if he felt differently?  _Again_? What if, after all of this, after his father's fists, Jimmy's broken nose, their decidedly unsettling  _interludes_... what if Gary ended up hating Jimmy  _less_? But,  _that_ was ridiculous. How could he ever hate this person  _less_  than he did right now? 

 

This was, without a doubt, the  _most_  impossibly screwed up thing Gary had ever done. He wasn't above putting a toe in Jimmy's beanbags under the table if that meant forcing the youngest Hopkins mourn his own unfortunate place in the universe. He wasn't even above _jerking Jimmy off in a closet_  so he could humiliate him afterward for being weak.  _That_  was _revenge_.  _That_  was  _fun_. But  _this_  was dangerous. Gary knew beyond any redemption that this... whatever it was,  _this_  was  _reciprocal_. So. How, exactly, had they gotten here in the first place? What had they said and done to one another to directly lead them to this most assuredly fatal end zone? It defied all reason or logic. This might even merit the coveted ' _Worst Idea Ever Invented_ ' award, if that honor hadn't already been earned by both of them on the day they had first met. 

 

Gary swallowed another deep-bellied groan and pushed closer, rubbing his dick almost thoughtlessly along Jimmy's stomach. He forced Jimmy to dip with their height difference as he bore down on the other teenager, teeth dragging hard down his throat and to his collarbone. James even TASTED coppery. He hadn't broken skin, but the flavor of blood seemed to perforate throughout. Throughout this, throughout everything... Smith shoved a knee up between Jimmy's freckled thighs and imagined, fleetingly, a world in which they had never met.

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

Gary surged closer and with him came a rush of feeling, familiar only because he'd first felt it at the church. Jimmy's stomach flipped like he was falling backward even though there was nowhere else to fall, his broad freckled back flush against the tile and Gary's wet hair brushing his cheek and shoulder as he gnawed and lathed. He was being devoured, being drowned. Gary would crowd him down, smaller and smaller until he slipped through the moldy drain on the shower floor and Gary would saunter from the room alone, picking remains from his teeth. 

 

There was something so  _destabilizing_  about Gary's lust... was it right to call it lust? Jimmy wondered even as he felt the tongue at his Adam's apple and Gary's cock throbbing hot against his fingertips, sliding across the crease of his thigh. Maybe it was the canines at his throat that gave him pause, made him rethink what impulse was driving Gary closer to him, crowding him downward. Only a few moments before he'd felt so in control, so self-assured, having found stability and comfort in sexual routine. But this  _wasn't_ familiar—it wasn't a kiss exchanged for a token of affection or a drunken fumble behind the gym. This was  _Gary_ , Jimmy reminded himself with small bitterness; there could be no routine, no safety where he was concerned. He'd learned that lesson already... and yet he found himself here, again—the  _very first day_  he'd seen him,  _ugh, Jimmy you dumb slut_ —and could imagine no other outcome of their meeting than this. Whatever this was, wherever this led.

 

With a quick and vigorous shake of his head like a dog shaking off water, Jimmy cleared his wandering thoughts and tethered himself back to the moment. He was physically (in addition to mentally) off balance, skewered on Gary's knobby knee. He moved his hand up Gary's surprisingly toned back (he was a boxer, after all) and gripped his fingers into the meat of his shoulder blade, stabilizing himself against Gary's intruding body. He clung to Gary like a buoy on the surface of the ocean, while Gary's own currents threatened to drag him down. The motion was literally clingy, sure, but aggressive, too—it had the non-spoken effect of "if I'm going down, you're going down with me." Jimmy Hopkins would  _not_ be wilting in anyone's arms today, least of all  _Gary Smith's._

 

He had to keep in perspective who was the (almost certain) virgin here, and who was the undisputed make out king of Bullworth... though Gary  _was_ improving his kiss game at a disturbingly rapid pace. Jimmy was almost glad he'd moved to the throat just so he could protect his patented techniques from Gary's creepy cloning brain. That, and Gary's teeth dragging across his collarbone were sending electrical signals straight to his  _criminally neglected_ dick. Apart from the push of his knee, the full force of Gary's attention had been well above the belt so far. 

 

Speaking of... okay. Time for an experiment. This was a move Jimmy'd seen in porn but never had the opportunity (or really the drive) to try himself, until now. But with their naked bodies now practically flush against one another already it wouldn't take much maneuvering to try. Gary seemed engaged enough in his own ministrations not to interfere.

 

Tonguing the side of his mouth in concentration, Jimmy briefly let go of Gary's dick, propping the head on his hip. Quickly he reached between them and grabbed his own, bringing it up beside Gary's. Aligning their cocks against one another, he wrapped his hand around them both and squeezed them together. Jimmy sucked in a sharp breath of pleasure as he trapped his cock between the pressure of his own fingers and the hard flesh of Gary's dick, feeling Gary's pulse hammering against his own. 

 

They were kind of funny next to each other, Jimmy observed with a half smile. Their cocks were as odd a couple as Gary and Jimmy themselves. Jimmy's was relatively short, thick, uncut—pretty much what you'd expect from looking at him with his clothes on, to be honest. Gary's was longer, cut, and when aroused flushed a surprisingly dark red, like wine. Jimmy suddenly,  _hungrily_  wondered what it tasted like, his tongue heavy in his mouth, before banishing that idea— _for later_ , he thought, and decided not to think too hard about what he might have meant by that.

 

Slowly he began pumping his fist around their cocks, an approximation of what he'd been doing just to Gary's before. It was a bit of an awkward handful, but worth it—every ridge and vein of Gary's that rubbed against his own cock sent a jolt of pleasure through his groin. Jimmy realized with embarrassment that he was starting to vocalize—little whines and moans he barely registered as his own were apparently emanating from his throat without his permission as the wet head of Gary's cock slid against his. The feeling was incredible, though how much of it was actual physical sensation and how much was just from the fact of his cock touching Gary's would be hard to measure. Whatever. Biting his lip hard to stop from embarrassing himself more, Jimmy dug his fingers deeper into the scarred tissue of Gary's back and worked their cocks together, rolling his hips against Gary's, driving them both that much closer to the edge.

 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

 

" _Sssss- ah!_  Shit--  _typical_ , Jimmyboy,  _really_ , just... really--  _uhnn_..." 

 

The comeback vanished as the words welled up and couldn't be swallowed. Nails dug hard into Jimmy's arm with an accompanying hiss, though from pain or pleasure it was difficult to tell. Gary  _himself_  was having a difficult time figuring that out. God, what  _was_  this?? He knew the sensation was... extreme... and after a particularly nimble wring of Jimmy's hand, Gary was forced to let go of the shorter boy with a pant to brace himself with his palms against the tile wall by their shoulders. He leaned heavily on his arms and a hard frown painted the sopping down turned angle of his mouth. His eyes rolled up to burn a dangerous track across Jimmy's face. 

 

_Jimmy sat in his not yet broken-in uniform on the edge of his bed. He was casting a sad, hollow eye down at his thick thighs. He was alone. Or, so he thought. Had he been dumped here? Like all the rest of them had? Like Gary had?? Smith couldn't quell the little trill of curiosity that filled him then. He slid up to the partially cracked door with the intent not to knock. Jimmy let loose a private, quiet sigh as he turned a postcard with a cruise liner on it over in his sluggish fingers._

 

Jimmy's palm was wide and rough. It felt awkward and too intense at once, his firm grip spurring on unwarranted emotions. Gary reeled, his mouth falling open with suddenly thick breath. He felt...  _terrible_. Or...  _did_  he?  _What-- how-- but--??_  Why couldn't he slow his heart down? Why did this feel  _so terrifying_? Was this a panic attack at last coming to consume him for this blackest of bad decisions in a rush of mortifying adrenaline? Or,  _something worse_... did he  _like this_  so much more than he had ever been capable of anticipating? The confusing medley of noisy thoughts tangled hopelessly into one another as Gary leaned his mouth close, feeling his own moist breath rolling back against his lips from off the shorter boy's cheeks. Jimmy's concentrating flush filled his vision, and Gary studied the down turned curve of the redhead's excessively average eyelashes without actually seeing them at all. All he registered was red--  _red_ , and the cowing feeling of pleasure violently ripping a reaction out of him he hadn't been prepared for, or acquiesced to.  He kept his eyes on Jimmy's eyelashes,  _hoping_ \-- no,  _willing_  himself to keep even the loosest grip on his own self control. He bit back a groan, but just barely. 

 

  
_He liked it when Jimmy followed him around. He was like a dumb dog. A funny, misshapen mutt of a creature he had found in a trash heap, sure, but a kind of amusing pet nonetheless. He liked that hungry, flinty little glint in Jimmy's eye when he looked out across the classroom and thought nobody was looking at him. Gary wanted to take advantage of that loneliness. Jimmy's isolation made him special. It made him more like Gary. They could do things together... If he could just get Jimmy to heel. If he could just get Jimmy to do what he said, at least neither one of them would be alone._ _Man's best friend, or something like that._

 

Gary pushed harder against his arms, straining away as he ground his hips forward. He held their bodies now entirely apart except for the other boy's thick fingers scrabbling for purchase at his shoulder, and the hand wrapped around them that stoked with pitiless inevitability a ruthless feeling Smith hadn't physically felt, much less _considered_  in over a year. He became aware, after a certain amount of time he could no longer keep track of, that James was making a sound somewhat similar to a corpse releasing air.  _Groans_. He was  _enjoying_  himself. Gary's eyes narrowed dangerously even as his body perceptiblyhardened, his natural instincts torn between seeking his own pleasure and depriving Jimmy of something he wanted. They were often times almost the same thing, but in this instance forcing Jimmy to stop meant Gary would also suffer a loss, and in perfect honesty, the taller boy was completely sure that if he stepped away from the wall right now he wouldn't be able to make a dignified retreat. Jimmy made a grunt so perfectly timed with a jolt of pleasure from inside that hot, wide palm that Gary suddenly found himself swallowing a moan as well. He gritted his teeth instead, the throb of his dick growing insurmountably unbearable. 

 

  
_He didn't want to be friends. Jimmy was a traitor. The little -weasel-.... the rat, the thief, the dog that bites it's master's hand, the knife dug deep in the back... he was every bad thing, every liar who had ever misled Gary, every adult who had ever assured him that things were going to turn out just fine. But, the thing was, nothing was fine. Nothing had EVER been fine. Life was a series of building ladders to climb up and and seeing how far you got before getting ripped off of them again. Jimmy had just kicked the rungs out from underneath him. Jimmy had stolen the authority. Jimmy had stolen the people. Jimmy had stolen everything._ _Had it been planned out from the very beginning? Another traitor in a long line of traitors. Trusting anyone was really what made a person insane._

 

Jimmy stroked them faster, his tight fist slippery with water and now the mingling fluids Gary couldn't find space in his mind at the moment to consider dangerous. It  _hurt_. Everything  _hurt_.  _He hurt_. It was too hot, too terrifying, too noisy. Shower water rushed loud and scalding around them. It filled Gary's head with deafening static, and when Jimmy's fingers swept low and pulled them up together from base to tip, Gary finally lost the last vestiges of his cool. He jerked forward, a hand shooting out to grip Jimmy's wrist as his forehead pitched down to press hard into the shorter boy's shoulder.  His other palm kneaded the wall hard as his toes curled and he remembered with a sick jolt how young he was, how he was so sure he knew everything about everything but how he knew nothing about some things. He thought he had known about this. But he hadn't. Not really. A coarse moan cut through his thick windpipe as he considered how much deeper this mystery went, and thinking of Jimmy in infinite combinations of pain and pleasure at last drew him up to a sharp and final line. With a hard jerk, he finished in a hot spill of pearly cum that ran over Jimmy's knuckles, and that his fist quickly coated them both in. 

 

_He was out there. Gary knew. Some of the uniforms had gone missing. There were no other student inmates that could tread that same teenage sneaker print in the pristine snow outside. Was he a ghost? It wasn't an unconsidered notion. Why had he been willed into haunting every shadowy space just outside Gary's vision? Why did he linger behind every closed door? Why did the scent of blood sometimes hang for long minutes in the air? Did he watch them sleep? Had his pet really missed him that much? Gary had been waiting for him to come back.  
_

_A boy and his dog._

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

"F-fuck, Gary," Jimmy stuttered, suddenly unable to do anything but watch Gary cum. He slowly pumped his hand up and down Gary's shaft a few more times while Gary's head lolled on his shoulder, easing out the rest of the cum from his pipes, wringing him clean. His own cock lay heavy between his legs, momentarily forgotten, the other boy's cum glistening across his flesh.

 

Jimmy took the opportunity of Gary's post-orgasmic bonelessness to snake his hand up the back of his head, catching the short prickly hair on the back of his neck in the webbing of his fingers. It was almost an embrace, and as such he knew it wouldn't be tolerated for long. From anyone, but least of all from him.

 

But he didn't care. Gary owed him this much. He needed it, needed this—after months of silence, of being alone. Jimmy pressed the side of his face into Gary's head, breathing in his smell and hair. Gary's white fingers remained around his wrist—a corpse grip, rigor mortis—even as he brought himself off in a string of expletives against Gary's thigh. 

 

Even as, after, he rubbed what was left of their cum in his hand onto Gary's hip, kneading it into his flesh. His brows knitted in frustration as he watched the water wash Gary clean almost immediately. He wanted there to be a trace. Some stain of proof on Gary's body that meant that this—tonight—had really happened. It seemed suddenly important because he knew that in a moment it would all be different again. He was probably nanoseconds away from some cutting insult, some evisceration. They would go back to pretending they hated each other. Which was true, in a sense, but at least infinitely more complicated than either was comfortable with admitting.

 

Finally Gary stirred with a groan, either of pleasure or irritation, though likely both. Jimmy quickly withdrew his hands from Gary's body and folded them behind his back, leaning against the wall and grinning up at Gary in a casual, cocky pose.

 

"Did you like that, Gary-boy?" Jimmy sneered in his best Gary impression, which admittedly was still not great. "All you had to do was  _ask._ "

 

He had no idea if Gary even remembered saying that to him those months ago, and maybe it betrayed how much he'd dwelled on it to repeat them back. But he'd fantasized about that moment, and  _this_  moment, so many times that he couldn't resist throwing them back in Gary's face. Even if his grin had more of a genuine smile to it than he would have liked to project.

 

 

  

**GARY  
**

  

For long moments after what had been a painfully,  _painfully_  delayed release, Gary kept his forehead lodged in the crook of Jimmy’s neck. Everything was dark. Quiet. He even tolerated the obnoxious way the other boy’s hammy fingers looped up around his scalp, pulling him closer into the hot corner where Gary safely hid. He couldn’t  _see anything_ here, and could barely hear anything either, other than the rush of water and the erratic thud of his own pulse hammering in his ears. It was  _almost_  peaceful. What was this…  _calm_ … feeling? His knees felt boneless. And yet, a strange and terrible pressure had, very briefly, been lifted off his shoulders. The feeling was baffling enough that he didn’t even gag when Jimmy rubbed his face against him in what was a threateningly affectionate manner. But all too soon the delusion of safety rinsed away, if indeed he had ever really been safe to begin with. What  _was_  safety? The thought  was sharp and cruel. It wasn’t this, Gary coldly concluded in the dark. Not  _here_. Nothing about this idiotically ill-advised situation was safe, he could be sure of that. What was he thinking, right now? What was he DOING? ‘ _Safety_ ’ was a locked door and a Dostoyevsky novel. It was the sound of a teenage girl crying. It was blind praise for a job well done from a teacher who didn’t realize their grade book had been stolen. It was NOT pressing into the wet clavicle of a pugilistic neanderthal with the IQ of a dirty boot. 

 

Gary’s knuckles twitched against Jimmy’s thick wrist. They had taken things too far. This was bad. This was… really,  _really bad_. The redhead kneaded at his hip with an animalistic palm, and like clockwork, Gary’s anxiety returned. An unbidden groan of frustration escaped him, and Jimmy’s hands yanked back as if he had been burned. 

 

“Did you  _like_  that,  _Gary-boy_?” James was a mocking, disembodied growl of hormonal competitiveness. “ _All you had to do was ask._ ” 

 

The voice instantly broke the rest of their spell of silence. And, thinking on that,  it really HAD been a…  _frustratingly persuasive_  spell… rushing water and cold tile taking Gary farther away from himself than, perhaps, he had  _ever_  been. But  _now_?  HA.  James thought he was funny now. Too funny. Hilarious, even.  His tone seemed to suggest as much. But, _nothing_  was funny about this. This? This was a  _disaster_.  Hearing that voice again really hammered it home that  _Jimmy_  had been the one to do…  _those…. things._   _Jimmy_  was with him now, not someone else, still close enough to feel the heat rolling off his bare chest. God, he was too close.  Gary’s forehead lifted an inch above Jimmy’s shoulder, not touching skin to skin anymore, but barely still brushing the thick freckly strips of muscle there with the wet tips of his bangs. He stared into the void for a few seconds as the words doubled back on him, astonishingly familiar. Was Jimmy making a… clever joke?? Well, it wasn’t really  _that_  clever. Even a crow could learn to repeat things it heard often enough. 

 

With slow dignity, like a boxer beaten down one too many times, Gary lifted his neck and leveled Jimmy with a menacing glare in the red light. 

 

“….Was… that  _all_?” He let the question hang, unintentionally hoarse, as he filled his expression with as much judgement as he could muster. “Seriously,  _that’s_  what everybody is so worked up over? Your stupid hand? Jerking them off like some horny chimp on steroids? Jesus, I could have just done that at home  _by myself._ ”  

 

Not that he WOULD have, but, the sentiment needed to be communicated. James was far too cocky at the moment, and Gary was progressively growing tighter with anxiety as time went on. He couldn’t betray himself, not here, not now.  But he was starting to feel a generally unsettling sense of concern that he was sure would soon begin to show on his face if he wasn’t careful. Or, was concern too soft a description? What Gary was feeling now was more akin to ALARM. He stared at the shorter boy, unblinking, his pulse racing in his throat and his breath coming quick through his nose.  _What_  had just happened between them? What  _was this_? How was he supposed to act right now? After…  _that_?? Awkward ice filled his chest as Gary glared astonishingly at Jimmy’s thuggish jawline. 

 

That hand. It had felt… too… just… too… _Just too_. Too much. Too good. Too bad. Too _something_ , but definitely too, too much. It had been both disgusting and ethereal in a way that now frustrated Gary beyond comprehension. What did he want out of this? Did he want to do it again, or run headlong in the opposite direction? No, he didn’t want to run. Unless it was to RUN a LAWN MOWER over Jimmy’s prostrate body. But that was  _insane_. THIS was insane. Everything about this situation was insane, and had been since the moment his finger had come in contact with the sharp edge of a stack of wedding invitations on his father’s desk.  He didn’t even have the sufficient space in his brain to consider the germs he had just licked out of the crevices in Jimmy’s teeth. He would think about the  _‘why’s’_  of that particular lapse in judgement another time, when he was experiencing less of an  _all-consuming existential crisis._

 

At last, Gary drew up to his full height and both hands wove up to wrack his wet hair away from his face. He pulled it back, tight at the roots, until the skin of his forehead smoothed the creases out from his last year of incarceration. Then, as if unexpectedly slapped, Gary barked out a sudden cruel laugh.  Just how ridiculous was this situation going to get? He leveled Jimmy with a deathly glare. Now that they had kind of…  _consummated_ … what could possibly be next? Eating together? Holding hands??  No. Over his dead body.  Jimmy had, somehow, managed to maneuver Gary into to doing something stupid  _again_. It kept happening, and Gary didn’t know how to make it stop. Like vomit, he felt it coming on and yet was powerless to stop it’s total inevitability. WHY did Jimmy have this power? Time after time after time, Gary kept finding himself making the wrong choices, over and over and over,  Jimmy’s sheer physicality simply microwaving any proxy brain cells that happened to drift too close. HOW did he keep managing to do this?? Where did it end? What choices, if any, could Gary even really make now, that weren’t  _completely_  terrible?

 

Gary released his hair in a sudden manic huff, and roughly shoved Jimmy’s shoulder at the socket with two thick fingers. He needed to get back on top, here. His panic was beginning to become overwhelming. He would just have to settle for cutting James down. Again. They were getting way too familiar.

 

“I don’t get it.” he coldly scoffed.  “What’s the big deal about Jimmy Hopkins if THAT’S the payoff? Why does everybody line up to kiss your butt? Did you just  _go down the line_  giving everybody a hand job? Did you buy them  _candy and soda_ , too? Is  _that_  what I was missing?” 

 

Ah… ok, THERE was the look. The look Gary liked. That angry, hurt flush of embarrassment that told Gary he was moving in the right direction. Something below the waist twitched, and his confidence swelled. 

 

 “…I guess I should know by now that that’s your style, but,  _come on_ , Hopkins, have a little _dignity_. Protect the  _family name_. What would  _our mother_  say? Your technique is for shit. I hear that practice makes perfect, but honestly, considering your track record, at this point you might be a hopeless case.” 

 

The taller boy leaned in again, feeling his stomach fill with cold worms. In a rush, as he stared down his wet nose at Jimmy’s cocky face, Gary realized he really HAD been waiting around for that hand job, proverbial or otherwise. Why hadn’t Gary been given that same courtesy until now? A courtesy extended to the entire student body, but NOT to Gary? Gary, who had taken the stray in under his wing? Gary, who had taught this doggie _everything he knew_? He had been waiting for gratitude, but had been screwed instead. Well now Gary was the one interested in doing the screwing. And this new situation was sickeningly suited to that purpose. He could use this. He  _needed to_  figure out a way to use this. He was now suddenly and completely sure he wanted to touch Jimmy again in the future. Again and again, if he had to. He needed to keep this going, because, if weaponized, it could potentially become a heinous trump card. He could strike out at their parents with it. At the administration. And most crucially, at Jimmy _himself_. It was also _irrationally dangerous_  in a number of other ways, but at the moment the pros seemed to outweigh the cons. It got more deliciously inappropriate the farther his mind drifted, especially now that they shared this most sacred of new bonds, brotherhood. But even that seemed to make it, somehow, even more alluring. The deeper they went, the infinitely more complicated and horrible things could become, and if Gary didn’t find a way to harness that evil, it would definitely find a way to double back on him and blow up in his face. That, and approaching it tactically was immensely easier than thinking about all the other insidious ways this development in their relationship terrified him. 

 

“My  _advice_?” Gary trailed a deceptively gentle finger down Jimmy’s sternum, acidity dripping off his tongue. “ _Stop_  jerking people off and  _start_ _blowing_  them. It’ll get you farther. Your jokes are stupid.  _Nobody_  wants to hear you talk, moron, it causes brain damage.”

 

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

...Aaaand there it was. He'd steeled himself for this, and yet, by the carnivorous, blood-in-the-water light in Gary's eyes he knew the hurt was showing on his face. Unbelievable, really. Of all people, he should be immune to disappointment.  _This is what you get, Jimmy, this is what you get for letting 'em in._

And yet, how was he supposed to keep him out? Gary was all around him, bounding him in, defining the borders of his experience. The shower fog that had filled the locker room blended and swirled with Gary's pale skin, creating the effect of him being everywhere. An omnipresent cloud of malice punctuated with two glaring, manic eyes. 

 

Jimmy's chest suddenly felt tight from the heat as his experience of Gary's proximity switched from warm pleasure to claustrophobic fear. He needed cool air, space, a clear head. 

Jimmy slapped the fingers off his chest with perhaps a little too much force, belying his rattled nerves.

 

"Yeah, you freakin'  _wish,_ " Jimmy scoffed, struggling to keep the impression of calm and collected. He wanted to resort to banter, banter was safe, but the words just weren't coming. 

 

He needed to be out from under the oppressive  _nearness_ of Gary. His head was cloudy, his fingers pruny, and God he hated himself for it but little worms of desire were beginning to wriggle in his lower stomach as a mental image of Gary's "advice" came unbidden into his mind. He pointedly did  _not_ look at Gary's dark, dripping sex as he shouldered roughly past him toward the lockers. A few beats too late he thought he should have tripped him, or at least jerked the cold water knob all the way on. But his head just wasn't in it.

 

 

 

Over by the lockers, pulling on one of the recovered moldy tees, a wave of anger hit him and he turned back to face the taller boy still smirking beneath the shower head. 

 

"You know, Gary," he called, crossing his thick arms, water still dripping between his naked legs, "I'm not saying we gotta  _cuddle_ or anything, but for once it'd be nice to be able to get off and not get  _verbally freakin eviscerated._ "

 

It occurred to him after this outburst of righteous anger that it too was perhaps a little emotionally revealing. It also kinda suggested that they'd be doing this again, something that he had certainly  _not_ agreed upon, though Gary had kinda already suggested it, maybe jokingly. Gears spun in his head and suddenly he felt kind of silly standing there with just a t-shirt and no pants on. Bashfulness was not coded into his DNA and so he stood his ground, but he definitely fought the impulse to, like, cover his dick or something. But Gary's face was inscrutable—that or the fog in the room really was too thick for Jimmy to be able to discern his expression. Jimmy threw his hands up in defeat, turning away from him with his feet making wet slapping sounds on the tile. 

 

"I'm just saying. It would be nice! It would be nice," he muttered, turning back to the pile of found clothes. Rummaging through them an idea began to form, lighting his face with an impish grin. First he found the pair of jeans and slipped them on, trying not to make a sound. Of course, they were way too long. Although they fit his waist, they were easily two inches too long, and the fabric bunched up under his feet in a cold, soggy mess. It didn't matter though. He reached for the other outfit—the pink sweatpants—and rolled them into a thick, Pepto-Bismol-colored ball.

 

"Hey Gary," he called. "I saved your outfit for ya. I think pink is just your color." 

 

He then hurled them across the room where they fluttered halfway into a puddle, the words JUICY sparkling up at them in rhinestones. He let himself savor the growing understanding and rage on Gary's face for two glorious seconds before taking off up the stairs, the sound of Gary's furious pursuit following not long after.

 

The old pool building, so long devoid of sound or movement, echoed for the second time that night with wild, exuberant laughter. 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYSSSS if anyone is reading this, first of all thank you! And second of all, I'm sorry this took so long! It was all my fault (squidnapped) so please direct all hate mail to me at squidnapped@bullytrash.pervertdumpster.biz
> 
> I really hope you're enjoying this story if you're reading this far. We have big plans... big plans...


	4. Bargaining

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gary struggles with unwelcome feelings and Jimmy makes an unexpected commitment as the rivals come to terms together.

  


**GARY** _**  
** _

  


Turn the lamp on.

Turn the lamp off.

Turn the lamp on.

Turn the lamp off.

Turn the lamp on… _pause_.

Gary pinched down hard on the tiny black knob under the lamp shade, and examined the surface of his desk. Slowly, his free hand moved across the distance and meticulously nudged the tip of his third #2 pencil half a millimeter to the right, until all his writing tools lined up in a tidy row just above the soft velveteen of his writing pad. As if afraid to put out a lit match, the buttoned-down teenager let a tiny exhalation slowly pass through his tense lips, and then was quiet.

But there.

That one.

THAT ONE.

On the end.

That one, on the end. A fountain pen his father had given him on his 14th birthday. It was fatter than the others. It wasn't right. The angle was too severe. Gary frowned tightly, and reached out to adjust it. The movement caught the cuff of his sleeve on his tidy line and in a sudden inadvertent explosion of frustration, one untidy pen became five. The teenager audibly snarled and launched himself on the desk, applying both hands now to reclaim order from the chaos he had accidentally created.

' _Some men say that the pen is mightier than the sword.' Mr. Smith laughed derisively as he handed his son the small, narrow fountain pen box. 'Those men don't know the value of a good independent contractor to take care of the messier side of business. Remember that.'_

Wrong. WRONG. All of it, it was all wrong now. Nothing lined up. Nothing looked right, his careful ministrations had been for nothing. An irrational wave of burnt-out hopelessness crashed hard over Gary, physically cowing him into leaning hard on the edge of his desk. The next moment was followed up with indescribable anger, and with one final yell of frustration he swept a violent arm across the entire surface, sending paper and pen alike flying up into the air. He barely registered the sound of the lamp shattering on the hard wooden floor.

' _But until you are the Smith doing the hiring, a good pen will have to suffice. This Academy you and the Kowalski boy love so much, it's full of morons. You're better than that rifraff. I should have sent you to an international boarding school but your mother wouldn't have it. She's too sick to take it. She could leave us at any time. Anything less than an A is unacceptable, do you understand me? Gary? Are you listening? Don't you dare walk away from your father!'_

The room was cast into pitch black, and for a few anxious moments the dark space was filled only with the heavy exhalations of Gary's receding panic.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

He breathed alone for a while, heightened emotions slowly ebbing down, his sweaty palms still clutching the edge of his desk as if it were a lifeline. Another few minutes of quiet solidified the muscles in his legs, and calm at last returned to the youngest Smith. Adrenaline dried up, Gary's body replaced the vacancy with an all-consuming exhaustion. He clutched his right palm in his left hand, kneading the tenseness away, and stared without seeing into the dark.

Cloaked in shadows, it was easier for Gary to admit that he still had a problem. Problems, honestly, was probably more accurate here, but in the long run it seemed ultimately not to matter. Who was going to fix it? Certainly not Gary's family. Definitely not any doctor, if a lifetime of failed attempts and a year of involuntary incarceration had anything to show for it. Nobody could fix this. Gary let the mood swing pass, and closed his eyes against the momentary ripple of need as it scorched through him to set up the line of pens again. The impulse swelled and receded, leaving him faintly nauseous. He let the mess he had made lie on the ground.

Outside Harrington house, the air was surprisingly cool and dry. The constant dreary dribble of rain had receded for a brief time, and the afternoon sky, though gray today, showed no immediate sign of impending storm. Gary walked briskly down the brick road past the fountain and onto the main path, allowing his emotions to direct his course. He wanted, in a very real way, to see Jimmy. Now would be ideal, but if he had to do a little bit of hunting, he supposed that would be fine as well. The exercise would help clear his head. Gary assumed if Jimmy wasn't on campus, he would be squirreled away in one of his hidey holes around the town. Maybe the lighthouse, surrounded by cricket bats and old bottles of port and the dust shaken off from the oxfords of a hundred sons of wealthier men than any Hopkins. Or maybe he would be in the basement of that absurd comic book store that smelled like moldy cabbage and pit stink, battling fruitlessly away at an arcade cab. Or he would be playing pool with Johnny Vincent the other greasy vagrants that prostrated themselves on the ground like dogs for their new king. A condescending bark of laughter cut past Gary's teeth as he walked, scattering a nearby group of terrified students. Gary didn't even hear their muttered proclamations of 'psycho' or 'nutcase' as then a fourth possibility hit him. The youngest Smith's smile slid off his lips and his step slowed a marginal fraction, wheels creaking in his brain a beat slower than usual. Maybe…. Just MAYBE…. Jimmy was in the trailer park with that other redhead. The tall one with the big tits that the mongoloid seemed to like so much. The one he seemed to spend more time with than even little Pete Kowalski. Without realizing it, a little color went out of Gary's face. Automatically, his body redirected him away from the main gates and back towards the campus interior.

Of course by this point he wasn't entirely done trying to deny it, but he wasn't _stupid_ either. He wanted James. Covetously. Selfishly. Gary wanted his dog back, and not at all in a tidy or easily understandable way. It was unpalatable in every sense, and Gary was galled by it as much as recent events were beginning to force him to accept it. He didn't _just_ want to stick a hand down Jimmy's pants, just like he didn't want to _just_ shove Jimmy's face in the dirt. Either as a poultice or a punching bag, Gary was finally coming to terms with the fact that he wanted both. Which one seemed not to matter. Those uses weren't mutually exclusive in the lunkhead's case, despite how hard Gary had initially argued with himself over Jimmy having literally any single good use at all. Like a listless wind, Gary let himself move unchecked toward the Boy's Dormitory.

Peanut Romano stood like an unbreakable wall by the dormitory entrance, chucking eggs at the building facade with a dead look in his eye. Gary walked past him as if he were a piece of furniture, a constant installation on campus that after so many uses blended into the background. The greaser's muttered grumbles were ambient noise. Always something about that crybaby Johnny Vincent. Was he upset that Vincent had a new best friend? Hopkins had a way with ruining other people's lives, it was no secret. As Smith took the stairs two at a time, he buried the notion away that Peanut could be a useful tool during a potential future rebellion.

When the teenager shoved past the double doors and into the dorm, Gary took a moment to appreciate how some things stayed the same. This particular zoo of unkempt baboons managed to maintain, at all hours of the day, a constant level of shit-stained negligent sub-anarchy. Now was no different, and though Gary felt disgust at their animal carnage as the halls around him filled with fart sounds, screaming noogies and affronted stink bomb victims, he in another way supposed he appreciated knowing exactly what he was getting into here. Consistency, in this shitty world, after all was a rare commodity. The only change (and honestly, even this wasn't terribly different from last year) was the way people skirted him with slightly more caution than usual. Bullies stepped aside, Jocks fell slack-jaw as they stared, and nerds, (specifically in Algernon's case) straight out fled the area. But nobody stopped him. Nobody spoke to him, except for the occasional stammered apology, and so in this way Gary was beginning to feel more on top of things. He felt more like his old self here. More powerful. And in some sense, simply treading these old beaten paths had a way of creating order out of what had been until recently, a totally fractured and uncomfortable existence. Here, Gary was simply more _Gary-esque_. By the time he stepped into the common room, memories of his earlier fit had all but been erased from his mind. It was fitting that Jimmy was king in this place. He wanted to sit on top of this pile of shit? Fine. It would only be a matter of time before Gary helped him to incinerate it instead.

And speaking of turds… The common room was quickly emptying out at Gary's unexpected presence. The ex mental patient hissed at Bucky when the nerd came too close, eliciting a terrified yelp and toppling him over onto the scuffed and filthy floor. Hastily, the sweaty boy scrambled back up to his feet and shot down the hall. Gary grinned after him, his off-kilter smirk flashing the gap in his teeth. The universe was properly aligning again. All but for a few braver stragglers, the room was empty. Smith cast his eyes back forward, and stopped.

Someone was still on the couch.

One kid.

Just one.

One oblivious, tv-watching, cushion-dwelling, pink-collared goody two-shoes, who, until this very moment, had managed to hide _entirely_ from Gary's sight. Briefly, the youngest Smith paused in his tracks, feeling stupid for having completely forgotten about Peter Kowalski and all the times they had shared together before Jimmy's unfortunate arrival at the beginning of the last school year. Petey. … _Little Petey_ … Where had he _been_ until now? Hidden away in some cubby hole, no doubt. Ducking and covering, probably with both hands clutching his asshole in terror, like a rabbit hides in a burrow. What was he so scared of? There was no way it could possibly be that he was scared of his _oldest friend,_ Gary. His _good friend_ , Gary. Why hide from your _best friend_? Gary had been hunting big game before, but now he supposed a _little snack_ along the way couldn't hurt. Especially when he had some revenge to dole out to this particular _little snack_. A snack who didn't call? Who didn't write? Who didn't visit?!

"Oh _Marian_ , show me your _breast stroke_!" Gary juiced the old joke, sliding up to the back of the couch and resting his hands there, where Peter was predictably engrossed by an olympic relay race on television.

Below, Peter Kowalski physically balked at the voice, then twisted around to put the other boy in his sights. For a few trembling seconds, the slight teenager was stunned into silence and sat completely still, his wide eyes bleeding fear as he stared up at his old torturer. His tremulous expression seemed to ask, 'is this real?' even as he made no sound, and Gary's lopsided grin returned, more predatory than ever before. Petey blanched a shade and rapidly calculated possible escape routes, but a ponderous glance around himself revealed a nearly empty room and absolutely zero defense. The fact that he was trapped rapidly settled in, and his entire body seized up.

"Did you _miss_ me, little Petey? Because _I_ missed _you_!" Gary slid around the side of the couch and flopped down next to the petrified teenager, slinging an arm around his shoulder to pull him in too close. "Whats wrong, you don't _call_? You don't _visit_? I'm beginning to think you don't _love me_ anymore!"

"G-Gary… man, I, I, I, I'm glad to see you're ok… I…"

"Are you?" The taller boy squeezed tighter, eliciting a squawk of discomfort. "ARE YOU? Because, I don't know, _maybe_ it's _just me_ , but it _feels_ like you've been _ignoring_ your _best friend_! I haven't seen you in a _year_? You don't ask about where I _was_? Don't you wanna know what happened? Or? You know? I'm _sorry_ , that's selfish of me… What about _you_ , little Petey? What have _you_ been up to? Did a girl finally pop your cherry, or what? Or…" Gary took on a scandalized look and leaned in close to whisper in Petey's ear. " _…Was it a boy?_ "

The resulting thrash from the younger teen almost brought an elbow to Gary's face, but the taller teenager had the advantage and he rode out the escape attempt with little effort. Instead he laughed loudly, cruelly, and wrung the neck under his arm a little more forcefully.

"LET GO OF ME!"

"Settle DOWN, princess! I was only asking! Don't be so _sensitive_."

Petey began to sweat, and turned wild eyes back up at Gary. "I don't know what you're talking about! My family was _at_ your parent's stupid wedding, ok? It's not my fault that you're like, _totally in love_ with Jimmy, or like _obsessed_ with him or whatever, and didn't even _notice_ me. You just followed him around all night! Did you even talk to anyone else? I mean, we _did_ grow up together… It would have been cool if you had said hi or something… but... I don't care…"

The genuine look of hurt on Peter's face went unseen as the smaller boy's words lodged themselves firmly in Gary's mind. Now it was Smith's turn to seize up, and his fingers clenched into trembling fists until his old scars burned.

Emboldened by Gary's silence, Petey continued. "I mean, It's fine, I guess your brain is still, like, _fried like an egg_ from all that electro shock therapy, so you can't be expected to act like a human or whatever. You know, I'm head boy now! I'm not some stupid punching bag anymore, ok?"

In a single fluid motion Gary threw Petey head-first off the couch. He hit the ground with his chin, and when he sat up as Gary stood, a streak of blood ran down the corner of his mouth. He looked up with terror in his eyes, and a moment later that fear was confirmed as Gary grabbed him by his shirt and hauled him to his feet.

"You _stupid_ little _shrimp_! You think you're a _big man_ now? I trusted you! And _what did you do_? You ran to poor James to lick his wounds like a faithful little lapdog. _What other parts of him did you try to lick_? I was at the Asylum for _months_ and _months_ and you didn't even _try_ to visit me? Not even _one time_? Yeah, well, you _know_ what we do to traitors here, right? _Don't you_?"

Petey vigorously shook his head 'NO', even as Gary's grin grew by leaps and bounds, his own head bobbing up and down. "Yeah, _that's_ right. We kick them in the BALLS!"

The resulting hard kick produced a gasp of pain from Petey loud enough to clear the halls, and with a triumphant shove, Gary pushed the other boy hard away from himself where his victim immediately toppled over.

Moaning at his feet, Petey was finally back where he belonged, even if Gary's stomach did give a nauseous lurch at the sight of him there.

"That's _right_ , little baby, I'm _back_!" Smith proclaimed in an obnoxiously sing-songy voice. His hands flew with wild gesticulation as he spoke, nervous energy once again summoning up pointless action. He paced in a nervous circle around Peter's collapsed figure.

"And for the record, I am NOT _obsessed_ with Jimmy Hopkins. Seems more to me like maybe you're the one _obsessed_? You always followed him around like a dumb, sad little duckling. You _really_ _are_ _pathetic_ sometimes, Petey, you know that? You _know_ you're smarter than him, right? RIGHT? …It's just that you're a _coward_. Well, it's nice that you and James had this _playtime_ together, but his silly little games are over now. I'M in charge again. Jimmy means _nothing_ to me. He pushed me down and I got right back up. _Don't you forget that_!"

  


**JIMMMY** _**  
** _

  


"Well, _that_ was unexpected."

Zoe arched an eyebrow at Jimmy as he lay beside her on the bed, panting and grinning. His naked body tingled with pleasure and drying sweat. Zoe's skin was cool in comparison when she brushed against him, leaning over his body to grab a cigarette off the side table. He looked like he'd run a marathon; she looked like she'd just finished reading a particularly long chapter of a not particularly interesting book. After catching his breath he rolled over to face her, propping his head on one hand.

"Was that, uh... was that ok for you?"

"Mm-hmm," she said, her response muffled as she lit the cigarette between her lips.

Jimmy was unconvinced, and his pale eyebrows drew together in a worried expression.

"Are you sure you're done?" he asked, reaching one freckled hand down to touch her sex. She slapped it away deftly, and Jimmy cradled his hand back to his chest in mock-hurt.

"I'm good," she said, not unkindly but with finality, and began examining the back of her nails.

Jimmy rolled back over, deciding not to press the issue. As he stared at the ceiling, letting his heart rate return to its normal pace, he couldn't help but be a _little_ hurt. It wasn't that he expected her to be moaning and screaming over his masculine eroticism, exactly. It was just that usually when they got together, they both got off. It was a source of pride, kind of, and an indication of the specialness of their relationship, their closeness and bond. They both had other partners, but in his experience (and to his knowledge hers) they were more variant in the levels of satisfaction they provided—his most, uh, recent partner being somewhat of an outlier, of course, in every imaginable way.

Who knows, though, maybe she came earlier than him and he just hadn't noticed. He'd admittedly been in his head. A little... elsewhere. He'd been into it, of course, into _her_ , and had had a damn good time—better than she had, apparently, which was a little embarrassing—but he'd been spurred on at key moments by, say, certain memories. Certain thoughts and imaginings, of a certain other body, another mouth. These were his thoughts as he lay on his back, not realizing that his relaxed post-coital expression was slowly reforming into his thinking scowl.

"So... where'd all that come from?" she finally asked, a smile playing at the corner of her lips.

"What?"

"That... energy. Something new with you?"

Jimmy deflected the question by playing offended.

"What, I'm not usually energetic?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then what, exactly?"

"I don't know," she shrugged, and went quiet again. Sounding almost defeated.

He suddenly became aware that she was avoiding looking at him. Had she looked at him at all today? Aloofness he was used to—this... this seemed different. He pulled himself up to sit beside her. Shoving the pillows onto the trailer floor, he sat with her shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall, their naked legs extended down the bed. His were still shorter than hers, but so much thicker, hairier. He noticed for the first time that they'd picked up a new kind of definition from all the swimming he'd done this year.

She remained silently staring into her lap. Her arms were crossed almost defensively, the cigarette slowly burning by her elbow. He nudged her foot with his foot. She didn't nudge back. She did speak up, though.

"It's just been a while, is all. Since I've seen you like this." She took a drag on her cigarette, exhaled. "You seem happier."

"Of course I'm happy, I get to see you."

That finally earned him a look. She rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, finally fixing him with an annoyed look. He grinned.

"It's true."

"I'm not fucking _Mandy_ , Jimmy. That shit won't work on me."

He shrugged, and she smiled a tight smile. He took a deep breath.

"Listen, I know I've been kind of a bummer lately. It's just been a rough year, is all. With the wedding." _And the raging boner for my worst enemy turned step-brother. And getting in a fist fight with my step-dad over said boner. And then jacking off my worst enemy turned step-brother's boner in the shower two nights ago. And the fact that I thought about it just now, when I was with you._

"Yeah," she said, and gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder. "I know."

He was suddenly struck with a strange thought as he stared into his lap. In his post-coital bliss he'd forgotten to take off the condom, and yet there was no condom on his dick. He was gripped with a sudden panic—had he forgotten to put one on?

"Uh, Zoe? I, uh..."

"Spit it out, shorty."

"I, uh," he said, feeling around under his ass to make sure it wasn't there somehow, "do you uh, do you know where the condom is?"

She just looked at him incredulously, then a look of exasperated realization dawned on her face.

"Fuck, not _again_. Here, hold this," she said, shoving her cigarette into his hand as she rolled off the bed. Then, propping one foot on the mattress, she reached inside herself and pulled out the wadded silicone.

The world seemed to narrow to a point as he stared at the condom, dripping with what he could only assume was his cum. If it had come off somehow and he hadn't noticed, that meant he'd...

"Oh _fuck._ "

"Don't worry, don't worry, I got it," she said, chucking the condom into the trash. She rooted in her purse for a pill case and popped one into her mouth, swallowing it with a glass of old water on her nightstand. Then she jerked the nightstand drawer open and started picking out more condoms like the one they'd used, still in their wrappers.

"I can't _believe_ I still have these," she muttered angrily. "They have too much lube on the inside or something and they just _fall off_. _Fuck._ I should fucking _sue_ these people, after last time."

Jimmy just watched her, his brain trying inexpertly to process what exactly had just happened. He realized he was still holding her cigarette when it ashed onto his thigh. He brushed it off just as it began to burn.

"Uh, Zoe... last time?"

She pretended not to hear him. With an angry grunt, she wrenched the entire drawer out of the nightstand and emptied it over the trash. One or two more condoms fell out, along with a bunch of pens and pencils, a few notebooks, a vibrator. She kept shaking it, and soon Jimmy realized she was just shaking, gripping the wooden drawer with clenched fingers. Hurriedly he stubbed out the cigarette and stood up beside her. He gently pried the drawer out of her hands and set it on the ground.

"Zoe," he said softly, "what happened last time?"

She was turned away from him again, her arms crossed over her chest, and he noticed her fingernails were clawed deep into the flesh of her elbow. He reached tentatively to touch her hand, and she moved away.

"You need to go, Jimmy. My mom will be home any minute," Zoe said, plucking his jeans off the floor and tossing them at him. He caught them, his face still caught in open confusion and concern. He mechanically started pulling them on, his brain flailing for something to say.

He wasn't mad—not that he had the right to be. They were fuck-buddies, or friends with benefits, or whatever cute group of nouns were supposed to describe weren't people in a relationship, even an open one, supposed to _tell each other shit?_ Especially when they were hurting, in pain?

Whose was it? Did they even know? Who went to the clinic with her—had she gone alone?

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, his voice wavering slightly.

She barked a bitter laugh as she balled up his t-shirt and hoodie, then chucked them at his head.

"I didn't think you would have heard me through your _cloud of self-pity_ ," she spat.

He reeled a bit, feeling as if she'd struck him with more than just a clothing projectile. But she either didn't notice or didn't care, the words pouring out of her as if some kind of emotional dam had broken.

"You know, I think I saw you _twice_ this summer? Both times _I_ came to you, _I_ dragged you out of your lighthouse hole, got you to laugh, have a good time. You never asked me anything about what was going on with me, not _once._ You couldn't comprehend anything outside of your own _suffering_."

She was advancing on him now, pressing him up against the punk rock posters on the paneled wood wall. Her index finger dug into his chest.

 _"_ So _excuse me_ for not running to your open arms when I had problems, _Jimmy_. Not that you would have noticed. You were too busy crying over your new _step-brother_."

His mind blanked in terror. Could she possibly know? She must have seen something change on his face because she drew back, her expression transforming from pure rage to partially confused fury. No—she must have meant crying from self-pity. Unless he really was that transparent.

He was paralyzed after her diatribe, and she regarded him coldly for a few more seconds, his body still skewered on her index finger, before turning away. She went to the window and shoved it roughly open, gestured for him to climb out.

His body was halfway through the window before he got up the courage to ask:

"It... it wasn't mine, was it?"

She pushed him the rest of the way out, and he barely managed to roll when he hit the ground instead of braining himself on the concrete.

Jimmy only realized where he was headed when he passed under the archway at the front of Bullworth. He'd been wandering the town in a fog for the past couple of hours, trying to process everything Zoe had said.

He realized some kids were whispering and pointing, and he looked down at his bare feet. He'd left his shoes (and his underwear, he thought, as his dick rubbed against the hard seam of his jeans again) at Zoe's and he was way too scared to just go back and get them. She definitely wouldn't let him back in there without losing at least a limb.

But it wasn't just his bare feet that got the other kids' attention—it was the trail of bloody footsteps he was leaving. He must have cut his foot along the way, because there were thick smudges of red where his left heel met the pavement. He frowned and kept walking toward the boys' dormitory.

He needed a rest—he just wanted to collapse into his dorm bed and maybe never get up. He heard a high voice emanating through an open window as he walked up the outer dormitory stairs, and suddenly he remembered—Pete! Petey, old buddy old pal. Pete was his best friend, certainly he'd be happy to see him. He could really use a fucking smiling face right now. He amended his earlier idea—he just wanted to collapse onto the couch next to Pete and watch bad TV and maybe never get up.

As he entered the building, the first thing he registered was that the hallway seemed totally empty. Bedroom doors up and down the hall were closed, the rooms maybe empty. Then he heard the second voice, echoing down the hall.

_"Jimmy means nothing to me. He pushed me down and I got right back up. Don't you forget that!"_

Picking up speed, he burst into the common room just in time for Pete to run square into his chest. Before Jimmy could really react, Pete gave him one tearful look before pushing past him and running through the dormitory front door. Jimmy watched him go before turning to fix the room's second occupant with a stony glare.

Gary.

This was all Gary's fault. Everything that had gone wrong this year could be traced directly back to the cruel, manic teenager before him. He clearly hadn't been expecting Jimmy to burst in on his maniacal rant, and Jimmy could practically see his mind whirring behind his eyes, moving so much faster than anyone else's, with so much less control.

Gary was slowly trying to pry control of the school out of his hands again—those kids whispering outside had probably just heard from Gary that Jimmy liked to fuck shelter animals or something. Gary was the reason he and Zoe had grown apart. Gary was the reason his mom hadn't written to him in six months. And now Gary was trying to take Petey away from him too, intimidating him back into his grasp.

Jimmy balled his fists into Gary's shirt and slammed him against the wall. He twisted the fabric in his meaty fists, pulling it down across his shoulders, and pressed his full weight against him harder, forcing the air out of his chest.

"Yeah, I fucking pushed you down," he breathed, his eyes never leaving their deadlock with Gary's.

"And I can do it again. Don't _you_ forget _that_."

  


**  GARY   
**

  


The impact of hitting the wall was violent enough to shake plaster dust from the water stained ceiling, and Gary momentarily blanched a shade whiter as nauseous breathlessness physically overtook him. Plaster particles settled in his hair, and a half-snarl, half manic grin tore back the side of his face. Had the wind merely been knocked out of him? Or, was it those thick fists at his chest that made the taller teenager feel this way? They had come _so close_ to hitting each other over the summer, before the wedding, before… _everything else_ … but a servant or a parent had always breached their privacy just in time to override any potential physical confrontation. Of course this hadn't stopped Gary from trying to instigate trouble, but the brutish simplicity of finally arriving again at this point did, somehow, against his every better judgement, still come as a bit of a shock. Jimmy's presence alone, at this particular moment, came as a bit of a shock. Where had he come from? Where had he been? And how had he managed to arrive at literally _just_ the wrong moment? Gary loudly sucked in a painful breath, it hitched, and then he began to laugh. It was a mocking, contemptuous sound, even against the physical strain on his body. And like everything else about the youngest Smith, it sounded just slightly unhinged. He felt his chest rumbling against Jimmy's trembling fists.

" _Stupid_. What do you _think_ will happen if you hulk out again and throw me through another skylight? …Huh? You think _mommy's_ gonna _bail you out_ this time? Nuh uh. I don't _think_ so, _Jimmy boy_. This is the end of the line for you."

Didn't he see the truth, by now? After all this time? Jimmy Hopkins was a moron, but was he really _that_ dense after all? Didn't he _understand_ that _all they had now was each other_?

Gary snaked a hand up to grab loosely at Jimmy's right wrist, his own breath still catching even as the winded feeling receded. His grin still lingered, pulling back and forth on the corner of his mouth, periodically flashing the gap in his teeth as he lowered his voice. "You get kicked out of this school? You go to _military_ school. You didn't like being _my_ dog? Try being like _my_ _father_. Or worse? You go to a juvenile detention center. You aren't 18 yet, you would have to stay there for at _least_ a year. And then? Who knows where my father might choose to send you? He could decide you need some… _hard rehabilitation_ … and have you committed to a labor camp in _Alaska_ where you spend 14 hours _a day_ sawing down _trees_ and melting _snow_. You DO remember your, uh… last encounter… with.. _our_ parents, right? At least _I_ have an excuse. _I'm_ supposed to be _insane_. But they didn't catch _me_ with _my_ pants around _my_ ankles. You hit me and you're _finished_."

With obscenely gentle fingers, Gary slowly slid underneath Jimmy's fists and pried them away. With measured calculation, he carefully took a step back, away from the wall, both palms held up in surrender. Another step back saw him turn those palms up to smooth back the immaculate crease in his hair, and he finally looked James up and down. Jimmy looked… like total shit. Total shit without any shoes on. Gary quirked an eyebrow. What had happened? Why did he look so _wrung out_? The trashy joke ' _barefoot and pregnant_ ' came to mind, and for the sixteen thousandth time, Gary wondered why this dumpster neanderthal was exactly so captivating.

"…You're… uh, really not looking at the _big picture_ here, James. _Think_ about it." Gary's voice honeyed with reason now, and he stepped a little closer again, his desire to invade Jimmy's personal space dueling with his desire for physical safety. "Wouldn't it be better for you if you just… _worked together_ with me again? We don't have to do… you know… _this_ …" he gestured a finger between the two of them. "Every time we get angry at each other, do we? Aren't there better ways to… _blow off_ some _steam_?"

The implication hung for a beat. Not that the sight of Jimmy Hopkins bleeding from the face didn't immediately produce a hot hard jolt somewhere below the belt for Gary, but the thing was, if they were going to have a fist fight, here wouldn't be the place for it. Jimmy needed to be reasoned with, right now. _Not_ hit. _Not_ with so many eyes and ears so close at hand. It was too early in their little game to arrive at this kind of climax _this soon_. If James really wanted to fight, they could do it properly. In the Hole, maybe. Or, Gary's heart skipped a beat, up on the roof again. Maybe he could break the redhead's nose against one of the bells. Maybe he would _blow him_ against one of those bells. A reaction was a reaction. A button was a button. As long as Jimmy's attention was trained on him, Gary was, at least _almost_ , satisfied.

"There's still a chance for you, Hopkins." The taller boy leaned in a little to whisper conspiratorially, folding his arms across his chest. "Forget about that blonde jerkoff with all the zits, and that dumb slut Mandy, or Pinky Gauthier with her aunt that's got six toes. Forget about that druggy trailer trash with the spikes and the tits _before it's too late_. You don't need them."

In all his cleverness, even despite his personal struggle over the last few weeks with what he _was_ and _was not_ feeling, Gary Smith failed now to realize his own implied point. It was _supposed to_ imply cutting away unnecessary distractions from a potential business relationship. Instead, it read as a relationship request. Gary stared pointedly at Jimmy, for once oblivious.

  


** JIMMY ** _**   
** _

  


Through Gary's whole unbelievably self-aggrandizing speech, Jimmy regarded him with dull, tired eyes. He was right. Gary was hardly _the apple of his daddy's eye_ , but he was still a Smith—a true Smith—and that meant he had to be protected. Avenged. He was just another part of his father's miserly fortune, and woe to the thief who tries to take him away. Besides, the old man had plenty of reasons to want to get rid of Jimmy. He was lucky he hadn't been disappeared already.

He must have frightened Gary Sr. at the wedding. It was the only answer as to why he was still here, not in some labor camp in Alaska or whatever Gary was still talking about. Jimmy still couldn't remember the moment very clearly. He'd gone into a frenzy, a rage. But as he watched Gary Junior's lips sneer through his string of threats, promising the weight of revenge from a father who hated Gary only slightly less than he hated Jimmy, he did remember the feeling of another shirt balled in his fists, another body beneath him. Vomiting blood and hatred onto that face as the larger fists wailed against him, ironically forcing out more and more blood and more and more hatred.

And then Gary's cool hands were encircling his wrists, and he let Gary extricate himself from his grasp. It wasn't Gary he wanted to hurt, he was beginning to remember. Better to save his fists for the man in the closet.

Now, certainly Gary would walk away. Having demonstrated his point about how untouchable he was, he could run off and find some animal to torture and leave Jimmy alone to wallow. And god, did Jimmy want to wallow. And he wanted to do it lying down. And he wanted to get the piece of fucking glass out of his foot.

But Gary didn't. Instead, he seemed to change course, began wheedling himself back in, closer. Gary was suggesting some kind of partnership... working together... wait, _blowing off steam?_

Jimmy's blinked up at Gary as he loomed closer, gaped as he listed off the names of four of his last flings. How he even knew who Jimmy was fucking, he couldn't begin to say. He couldn't even muster a bristle when Gary slandered Zoe—he was too fixated on the fact that Gary seemed to be telling him to call it off with them.

_Wait a minute—was Gary Smith asking him to go steady?_

"Unbelievable," he muttered, and shook his head a little to clear the daze. Gary's eyes drilled holes in him as he waited for Jimmy to respond to his demands. And Jimmy wasn't really sure how to respond—a hearty laugh? Hock a loogie in his face? Maybe just jump out the nearest window and never come back?

Nah, those weren't fun enough. And shit but Gary smelled _good._

Jimmy looped one thumb into Gary's belt loop to draw him closer.

"Gary, I'm flattered, but I don't know if I'm really programmed for monogamy," Jimmy purred, taking the chance to inhale the clean smell of Gary's shirt. Gary's body was stiff and lean against him, and his mind flashed back to what it looked like in the shower.

"Especially if all I have to go on is a shower make out session and a church closet hand job."

Jimmy wanted to tease him, throw him off balance—surely he wasn't really asking him to go out?—but then why was his heart suddenly thundering in his chest? For a moment, Jimmy wasn't even sure if he _was_ joking. Because he _did_ want to forget them all right now. Even Zoe, _especially_ Zoe. And really, since last they'd met—fuck it, since _January_ —he'd thought about Gary so much it practically felt like monogamy.

He'd never had this problem before. Jimmy slept around, but he was always in the moment with whoever he was with. He appreciated his partners, every one of them, for who they were. But with Zoe this morning, he'd definitely been somewhere else. He'd been _here,_ pressing into Gary's body, grinning up at him beneath his stupid fringe of hair.

"You're always welcome to try and convince me, though," he added, almost drunkenly, and leaned in for a kiss.

  


** GARY   
**

  


For a few heavy seconds, Gary leaned forward, letting Jimmy's fingers draw him in until he lingered just a little too close, feeling the shorter boy's hot breath spilling across his face. But the closeness brought with it a strange, hot lurch in Gary's stomach, and he leaned back again a millisecond before contact, using a distracted cough to break away. He turned his head towards the exit with a pinched expression, closing his eyes, and for once had no cruel retort to immediately throw back in the face of the one person he professed to hate even more than his own father. Controlling his mood around Jimmy was becoming more difficult. Or, rather, he had NEVER really been in control of his reactions to Hopkins, but at least his _attack plans_ had always remained solid. _Slander, plant seeds of dissent, manipulate, intimidate_. Those were things Gary understood. But when Jimmy reached out to rope him in, Gary experienced an emotion he very seldom felt. The palpable wave hit him again, draining him of color. He was… really… _really_ … confused.

Gary's body made a stiff mime of casual posture as he stuck his hands loosely in his pockets and stepped back, still attempting to grasp back some control of himself, and what his reaction to this should be. Quietly, after another long moment, a small, incredulous huff crept past his lips.

"…You _idiot_. You want to do this right _here_? " The taller teenager reluctantly opened his eyes, and turned his gaze derisively back to Jimmy's brutish jawline. When he leaned forward again, it was to whisper quietly in a strange tone, somewhere halfway between condescending and reserved.

" _Here_? Why don't you post a notice on the bulletin board about it? 'J _immy Hopkins Seeking Action From Mentally Unstable Nemesis_.' Really nice, Hopkins. _Really_. You know you're doing me a _favor_ , right? You trying to commit social suicide? You wanna jerk me off in the middle of _English_ class? Or better yet, how about at _school assembly_?"

Politically, coming on to Gary in the Boy's Dormitory common room was stupider than the youngest Smith had expected, despite it's current vacant silence. That silence didn't imply that people weren't still… around… and if Gary knew anything about this school, it was that people talked. Viciously, and at length. It was a wildfire tactic he had fully taken advantage of last year to tear Jimmy's world down around his ears. Of course, that's what Gary wanted again now though, wasn't it? But it was… _too soon_ , Gary reasoned silently, running his shrewd glare over Jimmy's ruddy face. It wasn't the right moment yet.

The shorter boy was flushed and confused. As Gary looked him up and down, Jimmy's pathetic state of dress made him look, somehow, smaller right now. Diminished. Weaker than usual. And, after another long look, was he—? did he just—? _Had he just trailed bloody footprints into the room_? Both Gary's eyebrows shot up, his whole body taking notice. What the hell had just happened? Taking the image in, Gary felt a predatory pang at his rival's current state. His own blood pumped hotter at the notion of a wounded animal, and the slow return of his confidence began to swell up again and replace his awkwardness. Everything about Hopkins was absurd. Was Jimmy joking right now? What was he _suggesting_? Did he think Gary had just asked him to _go steady?_ Like that was something Gary would _ever_ do. Like that was an idea he would ever even _begin_ to entertain, even in the farthest realms of possibility. The sudden preposterous image of a smiling Jimmy dressed in his sunday best with flowers and chocolates in his hands spurred on a sharp snort of laughter. And then as if breaking a seal, the whole conversation became hilarious all at once. Gary laughed out loud, and angled himself fully back towards his adoptive brother.

"…Why are you bleeding?" He questioned in a normal tone. After a beat though, he shook his head as if to erase the question, and instead grabbed the other boy by his upper arm and dragged him steadily back across the hall, before throwing him, not too excessively hard, over the threshold and into his bedroom. Gary followed calmly after, and once inside, turned to carefully close the door. With great exaggeration, he turned over his shoulder to level James with a stare as he threw the bolt with a loud clunk. A hand went out to gesture at his own actions then, somewhat admonishing, as if to say ' _this is how you have a private conversation, stupid.'_

"Sit on the bed." Gary barked, all traces of discomfort gone from his face.

  


**JIMMY  
**

  


Instead of inspiring a sense of danger, Gary locking the door brought on a sense of safety he didn't realize he was waiting on. Jimmy didn't just sit, but flopped onto the bed, his dense body bouncing a few times on the protesting springs. He sprawled across the mattress and sighed, his bleeding foot hanging just off the edge. He wasn't entirely sure of Gary's motives in getting him into his locked room alone, but he also didn't particularly care. He needed a bandaid and a nap and to not give a fuck about anything else for a while.

He sighed deeply, and something inside him shifted slightly, leaving his extremities strangely shakey. Like he'd been sitting in a strange position, and feeling was slowly returning to places he hadn't realized were cut off. It was a little invigorating, but also a distinctly dangerous feeling. He cracked an eye open to see what Gary was up to, to get himself out of his head.

Gary was stalking around his room, rifling through drawers and eyeing their contents with contempt. Little puffs of dust rose as he traced objects with long fingers, rubbed them together, a look of disgust playing across his features. Now that he thought about it, Jimmy had hardly been in this room since that day—he had a sudden rush of memory to the morning of the wedding rehearsal, before all of this had begun. His mother pacing around his room with a disturbingly similar expression, simultaneously searching for something and judging Jimmy's lifestyle choices. The memory just intensified that shaky feeling, and Jimmy closed his eyes again to try and center himself.

He'd almost drifted off when he sensed a presence at the edge of the bed. He brought himself up on his elbows and made wary eye contact with Gary. His step-brother was kneeling by his feet, his shirt sleeves carefully rolled up past his elbows. Beside him on the ground were a pair of tweezers, a box of tissues, a plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol and a roll of gauze. Something about Gary's manner had Jimmy feeling like he was about to be operated on by a back-alley surgeon—maybe one who'd had a respected practice but had his license taken away for cruel and unusual experimentation.

As Gary began to pick through the wound, a look of grim concentration on his face, that trembling feeling insinuated itself back into Jimmy's body with renewed force. He felt the glass shifting in the meat of his foot, heard the crackling clink of it scraping against the tweezers. He twisted his fists into the sheets to keep from making a sound of discomfort, suddenly terrified of scaring Gary away. No, the back-alley surgeon wasn't the right fit. Gary's expression, his dark eyebrows drawn fiercely together, his pale tongue poking out the side of his mouth. Like a little boy. Like two little boys, brothers. Playing doctor.

The scene between Gary and Petey he'd so rudely interrupted floated back into his head. With a weak grin, Jimmy softly broke the silence.

"So I mean nothing to you, huh? You sure have a funny way of showing it."

  


**GARY  
**

  


Briefly, Gary glanced up from his ministrations to meet Jimmy's eyes. They looked at each other for a beat without speaking, before Gary jabbed the tweezers a little too hard into the bottom of Jimmy's foot, eliciting a sharp, pained intake of breath from the prone redhead. Gary rolled his eyes, before turning back to his task. For another few moments, he didn't speak.

"...You don't." He said finally, without emotion, though his hands continued to work unhindered. What was he expecting Gary to say? After a pause, the kneeling boy snorted. What did he want to hear right now? If Jimmy was trying to wrangle some sort of sloppy sentiment out of Gary, he would be sorely disappointed.

"Oh _Jimmy_ , I _love_ the way you had me _committed_!" The joke spilled out in the direction of Jimmy's toes, cruel, but not unnecessarily so. "When can you throw me through an _other window again_ and get me _expelled_? _Oh boy_! I can hardly _wait_ to fall behind in _all my classes_ and become a _social pariah_ again!"

The excessive sarcasm ended with another snort, and a dry glare. What was there for them to talk about? They _weren't a couple_. He didn't want to discuss it, Gary suddenly realized. He didn't want to say something he didn't mean. Or, maybe more secretly, he didn't want to say something that he really _did_ mean. He was addressing a _Hopkins_ here, _not_ a poet laureate. Not even a high school graduate. A snotty glare took up residence on his face instead, and Gary focused more fully down to his task.

Blood didn't unsettle the taller teenager, though Gary did wonder, out of all the piles of garbage he had recently rifled through in this idiot neanderthal's bedroom, that he'd actually been able to find anything even remotely close to a first aid kit. Peroxide by a stack of tests, all the advance answers marked in red pen by some nerdier subject. Gauze by a picture of that trashy redhead with the tits in a bikini, flicking off the camera. Tweezers at the bottom of the wardrobe, in a box full of basketball sneakers. Gary supposed after a moment of dwelling, that even for stupid Hopkins, having these things lying around made sense. A pugilist like Jimmy probably had a constant series of low grade injuries. Jimmy still had all his limbs, so gangrene clearly hadn't yet set in due to any of his other scuffles. For the most part, he was whole and healthy. Gary's eyes flicked back up to the other boy's lounging figure again and again, taking in the rest of him. Was he leather? Was he a tank? That would explain a lot of their previous interactions.

The glass gouging into the thick skin of the bottom of Jimmy's stinking foot didn't look like it had been too invasive at first. It was just that the moron had walked around on it. Gary bit down on the tip of his tongue in concentration as he dug deeper, unsympathetically wrenching out a shard that went too far in from the tread of a long, bare footed walk. On the bed, Jimmy grimaced, but seemed to clamp down on any louder exclamation. He _should have_ been crying. Gary's hands weren't being as gentle as they should be. Didn't this idiot feel pain? With a bitter hiccup, the youngest Smith pushed aside the still-painful memory of the night they had tried to kill one another. Jimmy had looked like a beast that night, full of bitter rage, his skin seemingly thicker than any troll's as Gary had chucked round after round of sharp red bricks at his lumbering body. If falling through a skylight on top of Gary hadn't left him with any kind of critical injury, Gary couldn't imagine some shitty piece of glass in his foot could keep him down for long. Though, it's odd presence in addition to his strange appearance did raise some questions.

"I knew you were a _moron_ , but you've _really_ been _pushing it_ recently, Jimmy-boy." Gary sneered over his work after yet another odd silence, unable to fully keep his attention just on Jimmy's foot, or just on Jimmy's face. He didn't want to think about why he was doing this. He didn't want to think about why he was _even thinking_ about what a Hopkins was thinking.

"You're doing all my work for me. You're a _mess_ , you _do know_ that, _right_?" A third snort, dry, almost amused. "Are you that upset that your _poor drunk mommy_ is at some _alpine ski resort_ with my asshole father? Or, is it something else? It can't _possibly_ be because I'm being _mean to you_. So... are you suicidal? Or... what? Because, if you want a _reference_ , I know a couple of doctors who would _love_ to perform an _experimental lobotomy_ on an undocumented patient. If you're interested."

Asylum jokes. Gary briefly wondered at his own words as he realized what kind of glib thing had just escaped his mouth. Only a month ago, even the mere thought of Happy Volts would have pushed Gary over the edge with spazmatic fits of rage. Now, he found that he could make the joke, _to Jimmy_ , and it didn't haunt him quite like he thought it would. He _should have_ been angrier. Gary _felt like_ he should be furious right now. But, he, just... _wasn't_.

With a final flourish, Gary yanked one last piece of glass sharply from the other boy's foot before upending the end of the gauze bandage and soaking it in peroxide. Once drenched, he pressed the cloth hard against Jimmy's jagged cut, watching him closely for any sign of pain. Jimmy hissed as the solution burned deep into the gash, but again kept his voice tight behind his teeth. Smith frowned, oddly disappointed, before flipping the cloth over and beginning to wrap the other boy's injury in a tight bind.'

  


**JIMMY  
**

  


There it was again. _Woe is me, Gary Smith, the eternally persecuted_. Jimmy was too preoccupied with the pain to remind Gary that the reason he'd sent him flying through a skylight was because Gary had decided to wage a campaign of psychological torture against him for _no fucking reason._

Jimmy sucked saliva between his teeth in a wet hiss as he curled and flexed his toes, testing Gary's binding. It was a good job, wound tight. Jimmy remembered the rumor that Gary had been a boxer himself at one point as he inspected the wrap. He suddenly imagined Gary sitting in the corner of a smoky boxing ring, dripping with sweat as he methodically changed the wraps on his bloody knuckles. The image gave Jimmy a little erotic jolt, and as his dick rubbed for the 300th time against the stiff denim crease in his crotch he was reminded that he _still_ wasn't wearing any underwear.

"I'm _waiting_ ," came Gary's impatient voice, bringing Jimmy out of his reverie. "Or are you deaf _and_ dumb."

Oh, right. Gary wanted to _talk_. Jimmy ignored him for the moment, rolling his legs up over his head to dismount awkwardly on the other side of the bed. He limped over to his closet and began rifling through his clothes as Gary methodically gathered the first aid supplies from the floor and deposited them onto his desk. Finding a pair of briefs that passed the sniff test, Jimmy threw them on the bed and began unbuttoning his pants.

"Just a shitty day, that's all. I went to see Zoe and uh... let's just say she wasn't thrilled to see me."

He heard Gary snort lightly and then go silent, clearly waiting for him to elaborate. Jimmy dropped his jeans around his ankles and stepped gingerly out of them, using the closet door to steady himself on his injured foot. Now that it had seen medical attention it was feeling healthier, but also much hurtier and _burnier_ from the healthy dose of peroxide Gary had just administered. His mind focused on evading pain, he failed to think about how he was flashing poor Gary, or what kinds of sex smells he might be unleashing into the room by unclothing his unwashed dick.

"I haven't been a good friend to her lately. Not that _you_ could understand, of course, not knowing what being a _friend_ is actually like. But... I fucked up. I wasn't there for her when she needed me. And she let me know it," he said, grimacing.

He knew Gary was just fishing for more dirt that he could rub in his face. Anything he revealed to him would almost certainly make its way back to him in a more weaponized fashion. But he couldn't help it. He _wanted_ to talk about it. Gary probably could sense that, of course, and was using that against him. But it didn't matter. He was here now, for some reason, when no one else was. Despite everything he said, _Gary_ was still the one here, cleaning Jimmy's wounds. Even if it was all a ruse, it was enough for the moment.

"And yeah, I guess I have been out of sorts lately. With the wedding, and... this stuff," he trailed off, gesturing vaguely between the two of them. He gingerly let himself back onto the bed, tucking one foot under him and letting the throbbing one stick out off the bed. His underwear lay forgotten by his foot.

"I probably owe Petey an apology too. And I _know_ you fuckin' do. Just what the hell did I walk in on, anyway? You up to your old shit again?" Jimmy shook his head, indicating disbelief. "Petey's head boy now, Gary. And you can talk a big game about your dad putting me away, but he can do it to you again too. Pete has the headmaster's ear now. Do you _really_ think it's a great idea to start terrorizing him again?"

Jimmy didn't know why he was trying to reason with this psychopath, instead of just admonishing him for being a shitstain and hurting Pete. If he had to guess, it was because they shared something now. And not just a last name, or some molecules of cum, or something corny like "a secret". They were both somewhere between king and pariah at Bullworth. Jimmy still didn't know if they were on same or competing sides at the best of times. But again, Gary was _here._ And that mattered.

  


**  GARY   
**

  


Gary fiddled with a stubby pencil on Jimmy's desk as the other boy talked. Somewhere behind his head, Hopkins pontificated on the quality of his day as he rooted around in his dresser, but the taller teenager listened with only half an ear. Whatever it was, it was about her. _That girl_. Zoe. As soon as that point had been made clear, Gary had rapidly dismissed his curious feelings and turned away with disinterest. Though he hadn't gone so far as to scoff, or to try to speak over the moron to goad him into changing the subject, the impulse hadn't been far away. Instead, he rifled through the desk drawer with a lazy hand, half an ear turned over his shoulder.

"You let a _girl_ beat you up?" The taller boy inserted briefly, only half-invested in the insult. "...pathetic."

The story Jimmy was telling was less interesting than what the youngest Smith was currently looking at. Gary touched all of Jimmy's papers. He had _expected_ Hopkins to only have stacks of comic books and porno mags. Those were present, of course, but, a lot more accompanied what Gary had always assumed was only simple reading for a simple person. The workspace was crowded with miscellaneous detritus... balled up ruled notebook scraps, advance corrected tests, love queries on crumpled bits of stained paper, copied lecture notes on the Revolutionary War, scratchy lines of heinously ill-calculated math. A diagram of a potato canon, a drawing of boobs on the Bullworth mascot. Smith's fingers lingered lightly on the marble notebook which sat open to the middle page in the very center of the desk. Jimmy's own chicken scrawl had littered the surface with meaningless doodles, the largest of which practically radiated teenage frustration. Red pen, blotched with ink stains. It read, _'Save Me_ '. Faintly, the corner of Gary's mouth twitched up in amusement.

_"...I guess I have been out of sorts lately. With the wedding, and... this stuff."_

Jimmy's monologue slowed a beat, his tone changing awkwardly enough to pull Gary's attention back up from the desk. ' _This stuff_ '. Did he... Did he mean...?From where Smith stood, his back still facing his rival, Gary allowed himself a long moment to digest yet another increasingly common emotion; slow shock. ' _This stuff_ '?

What stuff? The redhead's voice had wavered a little, faltering on the words as if he weren't entirely sure he should even be speaking them out loud in the first place. HadJimmy meant it as something about the two of them? Hopkinses _weren't_ clever. It had to be what Gary assumed. Jimmy's voice, after running the sound back again, had implied with _perfect clarity_ the meaning of the term, ' _this stuff_ '. The standing teenager rapidly blinked a few times, staring out the window as his brain jumped ten miles ahead of their current conversation. Did Jimmy mean that something about their interactions prompted him to act differently than he normally would? It was true that their parents getting married had been a terrible day for both of them. Jimmy certainly had lost a little spring to his step ever since Smith Senior had broken his nose in that church closet. But, _'this stuff'_? Between them? Just the two of them? Did that imply that the ill-advised activities they had recently been illicitly participating in together were somehow different from the other animalistic rituals Hopkins liked to enjoy with other people on a regular basis? Did that imply that Gary, in particular, was having a stronger effect on Jimmy's psyche than oh, say, Zoe might be? Or his mother? Or Smith Senior? Jimmy's voice continued on somewhere in the background in a chastising tone, but very little of it managed to register beyond Gary's now full-throttle thought process.

Gary didn't want to hear this. His body felt suddenly ill. He didn't want to think about this. And yet there it was, an ugly truth floating alone. Jimmy Hopkins had been thinking about him _particularly_. And Gary _liked it._

The sound of the bed springs shifting were the trigger Gary needed, his lungs filling suddenly up with a deep breath he hadn't realized he had been holding back. He turned on his heel. "Don't you have a flock of admirers you could tell all this to? You know, _instead_ of me? The one who _hates_ your _stinking guts_? Remember? What makes you think I would want to listen to yo-"

The standing teen stopped talking, his tongue frozen halfway through a syllable. Jimmy sat casually naked on the bed, catching Gary completely off-guard. He stared without making another sound, one hand still touching fingertips lightly to the edge of the desk. The sick feeling piqued again, even as, somewhere lower, something more sinister jolted awake.

The thing about it was, Gary hadn't ever really bothered to look at Jimmy like this before. Even in the shower, it had been dark, and hot, and confusing. But nothing was confusing about this. This was simple and real, the thick contours of Jimmy's densely packed body recalling imagery of dirty socks and gym shorts and soap on a rope and every other thing you could casually find in a boy's locker room. It was comfortable and open where Gary was reserved and closed off. Jimmy stared back as if there wasn't a problem, though his face did begin to light with irritation after a moment, as if a question he had recently asked was going unanswered. Gary stared harder, feeling a sudden, insane impulse to count each of Jimmy's freckles. There had to be hundreds.

  


**JIMMY  
**

  


"What?" Jimmy asked defensively, as Gary abruptly quit his diatribe. Jimmy frowned down at his body to see if something was wrong or weird or whatever-enough to grab Gary's attention—but no, everything looked pretty normal, besides the foot. He cocked an eyebrow back up at Gary who was still frozen, the only clue that he wasn't a wax statue the jittering of his fingertips on the desk. The dumb prude must not have been paying attention when he was disrobing earlier, because the sight of Jimmy naked now seemed to have rendered him speechless for some reason.

" _What?_ " he asked again, his voice sharper. "Don't be so mortified. It ain't exactly like you never seen me like this before."

Realizing that Gary must have been zoning out on him earlier, an increasingly irritated Jimmy decided to deprive him of the option. He was up and limping into Gary's personal space with alarming speed. He crowded Gary back against his desk, forcing the taller boy to lean back so he could continue to stare saucer-eyed down his nose at the fierce interloper.

"You hate me so much, then why are you here, huh? Why'd you come here in the first place? It couldn't just have been to yell at Petey about your 'fall' and 'rise' to power. You could have cornered him _anywhere_ on campus. So _what?_ " Jimmy jabbed two fingers into Gary's shoulder to illustrate his anger.

"You can talk shit all day about how we're mortal enemies, but it seems to me that it's a lot more complicated than that. And _you_ were the one who decided that in the first place. _I just wanted to be friends,"_ he said, his voice cracking.

This was going in a much different direction than Jimmy had planned, but the words were pouring out of him now in a torrent, the frustration of the past two years spilling out in a vomit of sincerity.

"You don't give a shit about me? _You're_ the one who took me in here. _You_ asked me what was wrong. _Not_ them," he said, gesturing vaguely at the window, to indicate his supposed flock of admirers. "You want to get away from me? Then get the fuck out. Just remember _you're_ the one who locked the door."

  


**GARY  
**

  


The physical threat of Jimmy Hopkins looming suddenly so close at hand left Gary reeling backwards, leaning hard on the desk as he held himself away from the encroaching figure. Fear briefly spiked, and was followed up almost immediately with incredulity. The taller teenager's pupils narrowed, and he turned his face more fully down to stare at the other boy, his expression now disgusted. _Why_ was he _afraid_ of _Jimmy_? From what ungodly depths of hell that unsummoned piece of emotion had come from, Gary didn't want to know. Out of all the people in the world (and he had met some _truly horrifying_ doctors,) Smith had feared no one quite like he feared his father. Now, as he looked down at Jimmy's ruddy face reddening further with anger, Gary realized that he _was_ afraid. But the feeling was much more oblique than the tidy way Mr. Smith's fists made Gary flinch. This fear had a direct connection to Jimmy's words. Jimmy's aggressive demand that he should just get out.

 _'You want to get away from me?'_ Jimmy's question echoed, burying itself in the taller boy's throat like a broken shard of glass. _Did_ he want to? It was probably the most intelligent thing to do right now. And yet, they both stood rooted to the spot. Gary's eyebrows furrowed together in disbelief as a mocking sneer tore his lips apart. James was too close. Who did this kid think he was? Did he think he was _better than Gary_ , somehow? Was Jimmy some kind of moral beacon? When had he ever _just wanted to be friends_? As far as Smith remembered, their initial friendship (if anyone could call it that,) had been an arrangement of convenience. Until Jimmy got tired of his mentor. Until Jimmy stopped respecting him. Until Jimmy, in all his stupid arrogance, had begun to systematically break apart all of Gary's assets and take them away, piece by piece.

Too many words to figure out where precisely to begin flowed up from Gary's guts and lodged in his mouth, making his tongue swell. He tasted blood, and instead of spitting in the other boy's too-close face, his threatened expression took a nasty turn towards anger instead. Sharply, the scarred teenager brought an arm around to slam down between them, shoving Jimmy's jabbing hands away.

" _Me_? What did _I_ decide?" The words barked out of their own accord, both incredulous and delirious at once. _"You're_ the one who wanted to take the school away! You didn't even _grow up_ here, so what the hell do you know about this place?"

Jimmy was _still_ too close. Gary advanced a step, giving the other boy's thick chest a rough, adrenaline-addled shove, sending him tottering backwards.

"You were just some pathetic new kid with _no friends_ and _no brains_ that I thought I could pay off to do a little heavy lifting... until I realized how useful you could be. So I taught you _everything_ you needed to know about this place. But what did I get? You took Petey away. You took over my gym! You turned Crabblesnitch against me. I was _head boy_! _Now look_ at me. You wanna look inside my head? You wouldn't last _five minutes_ there. You have _no idea_ what I went through last year because of you. So _don't_ tell me what to do. _Not ever_ , you understand?"

Gary didn't want to talk about any of Jimmy's accusations, but realized all at once that they had finally come around to the ugly bottom of the barrel. They would _have to_ discuss it. Just... not about Petey. Not yet. And so Gary glossed over that, fully aware that they had enough baggage between them to bury them both. None of Jimmy's words were logical, but Petey was his own special kind of taboo. Gary didn't want to explain what cold snakes had prompted him to shove the smaller boy face first into the carpet. There was no way to apologize for it. Gary couldn't take it back. And he couldn't show Jimmy his memories of childhood, of Peter Kowalski in a sleeping bag covered in cat fur grinning over an open comic book, while Gary shook jars of lightning bugs at his side. Jimmy fundamentally couldn't understand the weight of what he had done by taking over the school. He hadn't _just_ changed the existing power dynamics within the institution, he had ruined someone's _entire life_. Did Jimmy want to talk about the past right now? Fine. But it wasn't going to be pleasant. Gary advanced another step, his fists clenching with intent for violence. He could speak a little more truth. It was all he was doing, these days.

"I _know_ you hate me." Gary hissed, though even he was unable to keep the hurt out of his eyes. "I _know_ you do! So _don't_ bother trying to lie about it, Jimmy-boy. What was I supposed _to do_ back then? Just... _roll over_ and wait for you to squash me? Yeah, right. How many other schools did you run _into the ground_ before you came here? Is that why your _whore mommy_ doesn't love you anymore? I don't _care_ about you... So stop trying to _make me say_ that I do! _I don't_. I was doing fine _on my own_ before _you_ came along and took a _monumental dump_ on all of my plans. The fact that you won instead of me that night was sheer dumb luck! You're _heavier_ or something, your skin's thicker, I don't know. You're an _inconvenience_ , okay? You're the _garbage_ I didn't take out fast enough."

  


**JIMMY  
**

  


How the fuck was Jimmy supposed to get through to him? Gary was so mired in his paranoia, how was he ever supposed to convince him that he'd meant him no harm? And _why_ was it so dire, so life-or-death important to Jimmy that Gary _understand_ that about him? Was it just as simple as the fact that Gary was the one who got away? At Bullworth, everyone else had come to adore him. From bullies to nerds to greasers to everyone in between, one by one Jimmy had won them over. When Jimmy was king of the school, Gary was steadfast in his hatred.

But no, of course that wasn't it. Jimmy was no stranger to being hated, distrusted, reviled, for reasons outside of his control. If not here, then elsewhere—his other schools, his home, when he'd had one that wasn't here. And even now at Bullworth, respect was falling away from him—Gary was peeling it away from him. He already had the preps, and who knows how many other ears, in his never-fucking-ceasing quest to rub Jimmy's face in the dirt.

But Jimmy didn't _care_. Let them all fall away. Let him go back to being the short-ass new guy, the ginger weirdo whose name nobody could or cared to remember. Right now, he was focused into a singularity of getting Gary to _let him the fuck in._ Because they were _brothers_ , as complicated as that was. And not in the last name sense, not even in the "our parents are fucking" sense. They _shared something,_ something that Jimmy wasn't remotely insightful enough to be able to name or quantify, but that he _knew_. Maybe it had to do with their similar ambitions, or their weird chemistry, or maybe it was as simple as the expression on Gary's face when his father said his name. Maybe it wasn't something they both had, but something they were both missing.

 _Whatever_ the fuck it was, it was the reason why Jimmy was currently standing naked in front of him, fists clenched in intractable fury. And Jimmy knew it was also the reason there was hurt shining in Gary's eyes as he flashed his teeth, hurling insults and spittle into Jimmy's face with the force of a small hurricane. They were just reflections of each other in some cracked celestial mirror and Jimmy _knew_ it with more certainty than he knew the sun would continue to rise. Unstoppable force, meet immovable fucking object. Jimmy had dared Gary to leave, but he also knew he'd die before he let him get to that door.

" _You're an inconvenience, okay?_ " Gary hissed, but his tone almost had a hint of pleading in it, and something in Jimmy knew he was reaching the end of a very long rope. " _You're the garbage I didn't take out fast enough_."

"Well TAKE ME OUT THEN," Jimmy roared as he hurtled forward. His fists were in Gary's shirt for the second time that day as he sent him crashing into the desk, sending papers and notebooks and meticulously rolled gauze skittering off onto the floor. Gary's fingernails clawed beneath his ribs as he fought for purchase on Jimmy's bare skin. They grappled for a few seconds, their breath mingling in grunts of exertion and rage before Gary brought one shoe down hard on Jimmy's injured foot.

Jimmy let out a cry of pain and buckled to one side, but he used the opportunity to drag Gary down onto the floor. Somehow avoiding Gary's sharp knees, Jimmy managed to straddle his waist, one thick fist at Gary's collar and the other raised above his head. At the height of its arc, just as he was about to bring it down across Gary's face, he looked down at Gary's expression and froze, the memory of another body beneath him blooming in his mind—

—He remembered the wedding. He remembered the fear and hatred in Gary Sr.'s eyes as Jimmy bore down on him, barreling him to the ground to keep him from hitting his son again while there was a breath in his body. He saw those emotions mirrored in Gary's eyes, but there was still something else there too, besides his father's fear and hatred—Gary wasn't yet the man his father was. He was still the child, angry and afraid and lashing out against anyone and everyone because he was desperately afraid of getting hurt again—

—Gary raised one arm to block the impending blow from his face, and when Jimmy finally brought his fist down he used it to crush Gary's hand to the floor above his head, tangling their fingers together. His other hand released Gary's shirt to cup his jaw and Jimmy was kissing him fiercely, pressing him into the ground.

Gary had proven he couldn't be reasoned with, and besides Jimmy knew that words were never his strong suit. So of course it came back to his body to convince Gary of just how little he hated him—how much, well, how much he felt _the opposite of that_. He didn't care how long it took, he wasn't letting Gary out from under him until he _got that._ He would kiss him into the _ground_ to prove it.

  


**GARY  
**

  


Adrenaline burned battery acid through Gary's veins. His pulse hammered like a steam engine about to blow as Hopkins came down hard over him, smacking the back of his skull on the hard ground until Gary's vision crackled with white stars, and Jimmy was suddenly everywhere. The violence transitioned into _something else_ seamlessly, like switching on a light, or opening a door, and Gary's free hand instantly rose to claw short nails roughly down the side of the other boy's heavy jaw. Jimmy's tongue wracked the roof of Gary's mouth and the taller teenager yanked him down harder, unsure what the hell had exactly just happened but suddenly supremely uncaring. He couldn't even bring himself to think of the germs, his immediate grimace fading fast as something much more frightening and strong muscled it's way to the forefront. Jimmy's weight surrounded him, boxing him in, pressing him hard into the dirty hardwood, and yet Gary's mind couldn't find reasons to stop this. To _escape_ , to _hurt_. Anger still pounded in his ears, but now it was supplemented with a desperate electricity that was so uproarious and disorderly that it couldn't be dismissed, or even explained away. He hurt. He _hurt_ , and... he _wanted this._ God. He did. _He did._ He was in hell. And he was upset. Upset, most of all. More than anything else. About way too many things to count, though the stupid millimeters of empty air between the parts where they weren't pressed together were at the top of his immediate shit list. Every chemical in Gary's brain flooded in a crackling lightning storm of synapses firing off, and they all seemed to agree on a single mutual point. Kissing Jimmy Hopkins felt _really good_. But it wasn't even close to being enough. Jimmy's blood and tears had never been enough before. Now was stupidly, incalculably worse.

His pained moan was stifled by both of their very occupied mouths, and like an animal, Gary rolled his hips up to meet Jimmy's when the shorter boy clawed at his palm. They were both inexplicably hard already, in a way Gary knew most other teenagers were familiar with, and even that small friction produced a second frustrated moan Smith lost control of a second before it escaped him. But it didn't matter. Mostly because there was no time to care about it. Gary imagined rolling Jimmy over hard, before grunting with anger when he couldn't immediately execute his impulse and shift the heavy lunkhead over. His wandering hand shoved up, pushing James roughly away by the forehead, and they breathed hard on each other for a few tense seconds as Gary tried to gather himself. They were both flushed in the face, and the erotic sensation of Jimmy's naked stomach heaving against his own had Smith fumbling stupidly even now over what exactly he was trying to do.

What? _What_... _was he trying to_..? Jimmy's proximity and the rush of adrenaline had clearly fried all the wires in the self-professed Smartest Smith's brain, and Gary felt a kick of frustration to his gut, like a sharp boot. Then it was gone again, rushed away once more by lust like water tumbles stones down a riverbed.

Oh, _words_. Right, he had been trying to _say something_.

"...I-"

The stupid motion of attempting to speak actual words, _and failing_ , left Gary floundering. Several times, he heatedly began to form some kind of retort, some wording, literally _anything_ to articulate the electrical fire which was currently happening in his body and brain, but to his own horror, his efforts could produce no results. Jimmy breathed down on him impatiently with an open mouth, his lips raw and plump from rough use, his face a mess of earnest pink. Gary looked at him in amazement as he realized with a jolt that for the first time, he felt precisely zero percent disgust with this noisy, stupid cave troll. In fact, he was having quite the opposite problem at the moment. But those facts did nothing to alleviate his frustrations at becoming the new town mute.

Gary growled in frustration, and ripped his hand out of Jimmy's palm, before kicking out with a strong leg and shoving up again, until, doubtlessly because Jimmy stupidly allowed it, it was Gary's turn to straddle the other boy. They didn't kiss again, but in a matter of seconds, the taller teenager was fumbling with his belt, clinking noisily as he ripped it open. Jimmy's face seemed to redden as his squinty gaze traveled down to the place between them. Was he excited? Embarrassed? It didn't matter. Gary gave his pants a hard tug, all the buttons popping open with the single motion. The fact that he couldn't fucking stand another second of not doing this didn't seem to register as a bad decision at the moment. There _were no_ bad decisions here. There were no decisions _at all_. Neither of them had a choice about this. Gary didn't meditate on all the reasons he _shouldn't_ be pulling his dick out of his boxers, or _shouldn't_ be wrapping a frantic hand around the both of them, like James had been generous enough to teach him earlier in the shower. This was an act of desperate sexual terrorism that needed to be purged as quickly as possible, so they could get on again with their fucking lives. And Gary _wanted_ to let go. He wanted to let go of so many things, _of everything_ , so, so badly. And yet, letting go was the one thing he had never been taught how to do. Because _letting go_ meant admitting that he had nothing, and that he had no one, and that it was primarily all of his own doing.

"You're..." Gary forced the first part of a single sentence past his breathless lips before losing out to his own groans, his hand jerking them together faster. "..you... don't..."

 _'Inarticulate'_ had never been a descriptive term applied to a Smith before this moment. But as Gary's hand determinedly worked them over, he felt himself begin to crumble. His free hand went down roughly to bolster his weight up against the floor by Jimmy's ear, understanding even now very clearly, and with great pain, that when this was over, everything would be different again.

  


**JIMMY  
**

  


As Gary bent low over him, giving in to his body's need for balance, Jimmy used the opportunity to drink more of him in. Gary was frantic, almost violent with lust, and it was _fucking amazing—_ Jimmy had no right to be this hard again after sex with Zoe just a couple hours ago—but here he was, and here Gary was, wringing their cocks together and making sounds Jimmy never thought, in a thousand lifetimes, he'd hear come out of Gary's mouth.

Some of those noises were word-shaped, and Jimmy had no idea what he was trying to ask or accuse him of but couldn't resist answering, arguing even now.

"I know," he breathed, even though it was the farthest thing from the truth—he didn't know, how could he have known it would be like this?—as he brought both hands up to touch and caress at Gary's neck, his chest and nipples not being an option because of _course_ he'd left his _fucking shirt on._

"I _do_ ," he insisted, because he _did—_ Gary had _no idea_ how much he did. Gary thought he didn't, maybe Gary would never be able to believe it about him, but he _did._ He hadn't exactly known it until now, but now that he did it was just so fucking _obvious._ It was the key to the difference between this and everything else. Even with Zoe—he'd thought about _Gary_ the whole time he was with her, for fuck's sake. Or maybe it wasn't, and he didn't, it was just new and weird and another shift in Jimmy's hormonal cycle but fuck that it _was_ and he _did_ and he had _no idea what to do about it_ except argue it plainly, dumbly, without saying it at all because he knew that saying it now would mean the end.

"I _am_ ," he argued, and he _was_. He tried to impress his was-ness into Gary's body, taking advantage of Gary's frantic concentration to run thick fingers over the fine, spiky hairs on the back of his neck, behind his ears. He let his fingers trail under his jaw, over his Adam's apple, pressing his thumb against it to feel it bob as Gary swallowed. Gary's mouth was open and panting, and Jimmy's thumb found its way to the corner of his mouth just to touch at a sharp canine tooth. Gary's face was flushed and wrecked and screwed in concentration, and Jimmy fleetingly let himself imagine the expression he'd make with Jimmy's cock in his mouth, the feeling of his moans vibrating around him.

Jimmy was _lost_ in touching him, was having to seriously fight the urge to buck Gary off of him and throw him onto the bed where he could take his time with him, caress and lick and massage and _suck_ every part of him until his rigid body was completely unraveled. A moan wrenched itself from deep in his belly just at the idea, his cock throbbing suddenly harder in Gary's spider grasp. But he knew still that _control_ was an _issue_ for Gary, and Jimmy was terrified that if he broke this spell now he might lose him forever. This Gary was different from before—Jimmy couldn't believe this was their third time _entangled_ like this, it felt like either the first or the five hundredth, and nothing in between—Gary was somehow closer, more present, and Jimmy understood that here, for Gary, right now, something was on the line. He had to be respectful of that.

But Jimmy wasn't great with respect, and he couldn't stand not tasting him anymore. So without warning he surged up to crush his mouth back into Gary's. Their teeth knocked together jarringly, and Jimmy knew he'd be feeling that later but didn't care—he _relished_ it even, as a physical reminder of this moment. But now Gary was at an angle too far from the floor to balance himself, so Jimmy had to make some quick calculations. Wrapping one gorilla arm around Gary's waist to secure him, Jimmy rolled up into a sitting position and scooted them both against the bed, his ass cheeks dragging uncomfortably on the wooden floor. Now Gary was effectively in his lap, his long legs draped over Jimmy's thighs to rest loosely on either side of him, his bony ass cushioned on Jimmy's loosely crossed legs. Jimmy anchored them both to the bed, with one hand clawed into the wooden frame. This way, with Gary sandwiched between Jimmy and the bed, Gary was still on top, still in control—but Jimmy could better support him, with the added bonus of touching more of him, and getting consistent access to his mouth.

As Gary brought his free hand to claw at the back of Jimmy's neck, Jimmy crushed him closer, rolling his hips into Gary's increasingly frantic pumps. They were close, so close, and Jimmy had to bite back a cry of frustration when he felt Gary's cock spasm against his, felt his hot, wet cum splash against his naked belly. He'd wanted, _needed_ this to go on so much longer. But he'd take it. He'd take it all, whatever he would give him, he thought, as he swallowed the choked moan Gary released into his mouth, tasting frighteningly close to a sob.

  


**GARY  
**

  


It was just that, he had always been alone.

Nobody knew better than Gary Smith that you could be in a room full of people, and yet feel 500 miles away from all of them. When he had been younger, he had always assumed that the distance he felt was because people hated him. Universally, and without reason. Gary understood now that it was because he was _so much smarter_ than everyone else. But it had taken some time to come to that realization. He felt alone, because the distance between himself and literally any other person was like an uncrossable canyon. He could see how to reach them, but they could never, ever meet him in the middle.

For years, Gary had been a reckless cannonball of fast-moving energy, with no emotional check on himself. Now, he knew better. _Now_ , he was _different_ , and yet, doctors _still_ liked to harp on all the things that had happened back then... the broken windows, the neighbor's dead dog, the incident with the candles, the little Wilson boy. They had told him almost immediately that he was ' _psychologically unsound_.' They wrote messy scripts out for him by the dozen, burying his small figure in a flurry of illegible papers. Gary remembered being eight years old and being forced to sit alone for hours in perfect silence, his palms facing up on the dining room table. It had been the first of many mental punishments imposed on him by his parents, meant to crack a child whose only desire was to run at top speed, to slide down the bannister 50 times in a row, to stand locking and unlocking the door until the sound drove everybody else nearby insane. But his parents didn't get it. The little Wilson boy had only _wanted to play_. And the dog had tried to _rip_ Gary's backpack off of his back as he had come home from school one day. Didn't they understand? Couldn't they see _the truth_ behind what had _really_ happened? But his father had always said that there were _no such things_ as ' _accidents_ '. He _never_ saw Gary's point of view. He didn't _want_ _to_. So Gary learned to hold still, and to stop crying. He started laughing instead. It made everyone else more comfortable, even if it made Gary feel worse.

".. _.Hng_!"

With a final desperate stroke, the roar in Gary's ears reached a fever pitch. His vision went white, and then he was spilling hot, thick liquid over his tightly clamped fist, filling the air with the salty smell of sex. He jerked the flesh in his palm increasingly erratically, and a strangled, painful moan that he didn't quite understand poured into Jimmy's mouth. And then it was over.

As Gary came back down to earth again, slow understanding of where he was, and what had just happened, began to trickle in. He became aware of his free hand where it was squeezing Jimmy's shoulder, by his neck, hard enough to bruise. He registered the sticky heat of cum and skin between his fingers. He felt the sharp pain of a slat of Jimmy's wooden bed frame digging into his spine. (when had they gotten here?) And like a cassette in slow motion suddenly shifting to fast forward, the reality of the situation came up in a manic, terrifying rush. Gary opened his eyes again and pulled away, still breathing hard out of slightly parted lips.

 _Had he... just...? What had...?_ Shit. Shit... _Shit_. Like unstoppable vomit coming up, a disbelieving, delirious nausea swept over the teenager in a singular tidal wave. Gary slowly uncurled his sticky fingers and looked down at them incredulously, disgusted with himself. HOW had he allowed this to happen? _Why_ had it happened? His eyes went to Jimmy again, though this time fear and pain plainly bled from him. He hadn't _meant_... He didn't _want_... But...? It had, just, been... an... _accident_... and, oh. Oh, _God_.

There were _no such things_ as accidents.

Realizing he was still clenching Jimmy's shoulder, Gary yanked his hand away, only faintly aware of the blotted bruise already forming there. A second glance down at his wet hand and he reached out to wipe the cum off on Jimmy's bare chest. Gary's own clothes were already too much of a mess... wrinkled... _sticky_... And they were on _the floor._.. Everything about this was _completely disgusting_. Besides being sure Jimmy had never swept anything in his _entire_ _life_ , Smith could only imagine the particles of human debris that had been flecked onto the ground in this room over the last year. Sweat, piss, blood, spit, cum, and who knew what else. With fingers that were almost clumsy, Gary awkwardly tucked his dick back into his pants, and began to shake his head aggressively back and forth in a rush of nauseous denial.

"No. _No_... _no_ , it's _not_ possible." Speech at last returned to the youngest Smith as he disjointedly attempted to put himself back in order, his face draining quickly of color. "There's... There's _no way_ it's you. It _can't_ be _you_. No. _No_!"

It was too monumentally absurd. It was too terrifying, too _unreasonable_. Just thinking the _mere thought_ was enough evidence to support Gary's supposed mental illness. He _didn't_ have _feelings_ for Jimmy Hopkins. He _couldn't_ have feelings for Jimmy Hopkins. This physically awkward confrontation was _way too_ irrationally out of character for Gary Smith, in every possible capacity. This was NOT _Smith Behavior_. This stupid, sticky ape wasn't _half_ the man Gary was. He wasn't even _a quarter_ of his brain capacity. But it was so much more complicated than that. It was complicated because Jimmy tied his shoelaces in bunny ears like a kindergartener, and because he couldn't spell all the names of all the states. Because he could have a person committed without feeling any guilt about it. Because he helped people who didn't deserve any help, and trashed the people who did. Because he was probably ridden with pestilential germs. Because Petey followed him around like a puppydog, and because all his uniforms were stained with bicycle grease and he _didn't care_. Because he saved Gary from a beating at the cost of his own reputation, for _no apparent reason_. He was too bold, like he wasn't afraid of anything. And redheads were genetic weaknesses, and he used books like projectile weapons and his ego was _out of control_ and he did _whatever_ he _wanted_ people _loved_ him for it.

 _Everyone_ loved him.

 _Including_ Gary. A slow, cackling roll of laughter bubbled up, both mania and despair audible in the noise. And for the first time since his mother had died, Gary felt his eyes burn.

  
 

**JIMMY  
**

  


Jimmy stared with mouth half-open as Gary laughed himself out. He squinted as his brain feebly tried to process the scene, making calculations as to whether or not he should be making his way far, far away from him, or at least out from under him. His memory helpfully reminded him through his haze of lust and hormones that this person had not too long ago been in a mental hospital. A mental hospital that, incidentally, he himself had helped put him into.

On the other hand, though, Jimmy had a boner. And for whatever suicidal reason, his body had recently decided that Gary was a source of powerful sexual attraction. So instead of running from the sudden chilling laughter emanating forcefully from the trembling teenager on his lap, he settled in closer, wiggling his toes a little to keep them from going to sleep.

"You're so fucking crazy," Jimmy sighed in a tone that signaled exasperation bordering on affection. He suddenly felt a little silly, being fully naked beneath a fully clothed Gary—though actually, _that_ was kinda hot too, in a disturbing way. There were some kind of power dynamics at play there that Jimmy wasn't fully ready to get into... though parts of him decidedly were.

He was about to remark on the unfairness of their different levels of clothing and suggest some helpful remedies when he noticed the tears. They were unsettling in conjunction with the laugh, and with the situation, and with, well, with Gary. Gary didn't cry. And if anyone would know, weirdly, it would probably be Jimmy. He'd spent more nights than he could admit haunting the halls of the asylum, and he'd never, _ever_ , seen Gary cry. Nor any evidence that he'd ever cried, or was even _able_ to cry. So seeing this now was so unsettling that his brain either couldn't or refused to process them as related to anything other than his laughter.

"Alright man, it's not _that_ funny," he grumbled, as if Gary's laughter was in response to some joke they were both in on, and his tears just a biological response. All the same, the fingers on the hand still wrapped around Gary's back began moving in slow, soft circles.

As they sat there thus entangled, there came a soft knocking at Jimmy's door. Both boys froze, and Jimmy strained to hear the quiet voice that came from outside.

"Jimmy... Jimmy, are you in there?"

Pete. _Fuck_.

Gary vaulted off of Jimmy's lap and Jimmy scrambled to his feet. Halfway to the door his numb legs collapsed under him, and he clung to the bedpost to keep himself from crashing all the way to the floor. He let out a string of hushed curses.

"Jimmy, are you ok?" came Pete's voice, sounding worried. There was a rattling sound as he tried the doorknob, and Jimmy thanked God and everything holy that Gary had locked the door earlier.

"Yeah, I'm fine Pete. I was just, uh, takin' a nap."

"A nap? O-okay... Listen, I don't want to bother you. I just wanted to say sorry for abandoning you earlier. With Gary."

"Nah, it's fine. Don't worry about it," he rasped, managing to stand on his pins-and-needles feet.

"It's just... it was a lot. I wasn't expecting him. Next time, I won't leave you alone like that."

"No, really... it's fine, Pete. I, uh...," Jimmy glanced down at his flagging boner and grimaced. "I took care of him. Listen, I'll catch up with you later, ok? I'm really beat right now."

"...Yeah, sure Jimmy," came the small voice, and then the sound of footsteps padding down the hall.

Jimmy waited until the footsteps were a safe distance away before collapsing back onto the bed.

"What a fucking day," he muttered.

  


**GARY  
**

  


Gary watched the way Jimmy's body slumped bonelessly across his bed from a safe distance away. His heart was beginning to slow down again from the flighty twist it had taken at the sound of Petey's voice, but his body still hurt. It was _still_ attempting to physically remind him that being in this room was, somehow, _a terrible idea_. The teenager still felt nauseous. It came in sick rolls, washing in and out, on a tide. But Gary's brain now _also_ knew the origin of the feeling. He saw the truth in this, like he saw the truth behind everything with time. Gary's problem _wasn't_ the room. It wasn't even Jimmy's completely _oblivious_ attitude. Gary understood now, and with perfect clarity, that he was only upset with _himself_. He cut loose a delirious little laugh and rubbed the back of his hand across his face to wipe away the buildup of fluid. When his hand came away he looked at it with mild surprise, before dismissing the wetness entirely.

"Long day? Hah. Attention everyone, _His Majesty_ is tired! Petey, come back! He's _tired_! He needs _a foot rub!_ "

Ah, sarcasm, yes. Solid ground in an emotional bog. And yet, merely speaking the words felt ...strange... They spurred Gary's body forward. He began to pace the room around Jimmy's bed, slowly at first, and then like something caged. Being cruel, for some reason, felt uncomfortable at the moment. And yet, for all of his intelligence, Gary had no other vocabulary with which to speak to the only other person in the room. Saying something kind to James felt more unnatural and wrong even than admitting how many times they'd jerked off together. (Three. _Three times_ now. Two too many times to pretend it hadn't happened.) But they _both_ knew something _had_ happened here. Just now. Something other than swapping vile body fluids. Did he really _have to say_ it? Didn't Jimmy just... know?

Gary sniffed hard, realizing his nose was running a little from the surprise tidal wave of emotions he had just ridden over. He paced closer, then farther away, then closer again, his eyes locked again on Jimmy's figure. Just _looking_ at that human pile of meat made Gary's throat swell a little. The scarred teenager didn't even _bother_ touching Jimmy's comment about being ' _fucking crazy_ '. He didn't need to, because he felt like that, _right now_. He felt it as his eyes grazed down Jimmy's naked stomach, lingering on his dick as it listed to the side. Did he... not... before? Gary let out another little chuckle, a little auditory punctuation of disbelief, before pressing his fist to his forehead in an attempt to clear away all the rotten thoughts. For a second, everything got too noisy, and the scarred teenager gritted his teeth in order to uniformly shove all the static back down again.

"Look, we _don't_... You and _I_... This... This is _really_..." He began again, still clearly floundering on exactly what he wanted to say. The words gummed up as they came out, like he had been incapable before, pressed against Jimmy in a haze of disgusting physical release. At least he'd had the excuse of being preoccupied then. Now, it was just disbelief. _What_ was _wrong_ with him? _Why_ was this so much like pulling teeth? Gary sucked a tight breath in through his clenched jaw, unintentionally glaring down at the boy on the bed. Default blame always fell on James. It was just... _how they functioned._ The _stupid_ memory of Jimmy's _stupid_ voice _stupidly_ reassuring him rose up.

_'I am. I do!'_

"YOU... I can't... I'm not going to _pretend_ that this _didn't happen_." The words spilled out in a jumble. (God, _finally_ , a _legitimate sentence_. Sort of.) Gary tucked a fist under his other arm to keep it from shaking as he built up momentum, pacing closer to the bed.

" _You_ might want to just... _sweep it under the rug_ , but guess what? _Too bad_ , James. I won't _let you_."

  


**JIMMY  
**

  


Jimmy lay with his eyes closed as Gary paced angry tracks in his dormitory carpet. He had the faint notion that Gary was mentally autocannibalizing again about what they'd just done, but he had no energy to deal with it or fight it. He wasn't even bracing himself this time for the inevitable lashing out that Gary had to do after they performed anything approaching intimacy. He just crossed his hands over his stomach and flexed the toes on his injured foot. With blood returning to the area, pain was returning as well, and the pins-and-needles feeling had already morphed into a slow, steady throbbing.

He did give a half-hearted shush when Gary mocked calling for Pete, and he strained his ears to see if he thought his smaller friend had heard and was returning. He really, _really_ didn't want to have to explain Gary's presence in his room when he was supposed to be "napping." His already limited supply of cunning was running especially low right now.

Honestly, he was surprised Gary was still _here_. He'd fully expected him to slink out the window as soon as he was satisfied, when Jimmy's back was turned. He couldn't even blame him for it, either. It would have been the safest thing to do. Being caught together wouldn't just be social suicide—it would be administrative as well. Not to mention familial. Even innocent fraternizing between them was forbidden from the highest level, on order of Crabblesnitch's dear friend Mr. Smith. And it wasn't that he didn't trust Pete not to tell... it was just. Well. It was _really_ complicated.

So when Gary began to make sentences that weren't barbs or threats... okay, they were still threats, Gary was still Gary was still fucking _Gary_ , but threats in an entirely different direction than Jimmy had been expecting, it took him a few moments to process. He raised himself up on his elbows and stared, his brows furrowed in wary confusion as Gary wrapped and clawed at himself, inching closer. Had he—had he heard that right? Was this Gary's way of saying he _wanted to talk about it?_

"Uh... okay..." he ventured lamely.

His heart rate was suddenly, strangely elevated. He masked his discomfort by reaching up and scratching the back of his head.

"I, uh... I won't, I guess?"

 _But what does that mean?_ For some reason he couldn't bring himself to actually voice the question. He was genuinely confused, and he sensed a trap—some way for him to reveal himself emotionally, only to have Gary slam a door in his face, humiliate him. Because surely he couldn't be suggesting... no. Jimmy'd made the mistake of going down that road earlier.

So he fell quiet, waiting for Gary to explain himself. Begin one of his rants, work himself into a frenzy of vision, a master plan. He felt more comfortable here. Waiting for Gary to tell him what to do.

  


**GARY  
**

  


He wouldn't.

He... _guesses_.

...Good?

"...Good!" Gary barked after a moment of chewing on Jimmy's words, though he was a little unsure as to what exactly they had just agreed upon. That they would... what? Continue to talk about... it? The murkiness of the situation made the pacing boy scowl, a little flash of the gap in his teeth glittering above his lower lip.

When he did anything, Gary liked to do it because he was _sure_. He was a creature of surety through and through, because most of the time he was right. (Alternatively, he was _Right_ _All Of The Time_.) Now, he _wasn't_ sure. There was none of his usual bravado to help him through this. It chapped Gary in a way he hadn't thought possible, rubbing his attitude the wrong way like ill-fitting underwear. Several moments were spent simply blinking at Jimmy, brows furrowed in the middle, where the beginning of a headache was slowly starting to form. And then, as he stared down the orange lunkhead sinking down one end of the bed, the static rolled back and clarity presented itself.

Jimmy had _no clue_ what had just happened.

Gary's mouth lagged open for a second in disbelief, and just as quickly he snapped it shut again. _Of course_ James had been present for their physical interlude. But, it was almost laughably simple to see that there was no way he could see inside Gary's head. He didn't _know_ Gary had inadvertently just stumbled on a deep truth about himself. He didn't _know_ that Gary _wanted_ Jimmy, _constantly_ , in a thoroughly incestuous way, despite how much it disgusted him. Jimmy didn't _know_ that Gary _knew_ that _he_ didn't _know_. And Jimmy didn't _know_ that, right now, what Gary couldn't stop thinking about was how he could _never_ force himself to say words like _'I like you'_ , or the even more reviled ' _I love you'_ without immediately puking on the floor.

It was just that Gary had only now realized the words were there. They had been inside him for some time... Since that fated night in the closet with his father. But it was only when he let Jimmy's sausage fingers caress his tidy haircut that he began to understand what they meant. In what other fucked up joke of a nightmare world could Jimmy understand any of those things?

As if waking from a dream, Gary rapidly tied the end of that thought off in a bow and blinked it away, turning and unfolding his arms to head for Jimmy's wardrobe. With hands that felt much steadier now, the taller boy reached out and pulled one door open, before beginning to systematically rifle through the clothes on hangers there. He needed to be realistic. What did he have now? Jimmy's attention. His attention, and, weirdly, his compliance. Wasn't that what Gary had wanted the whole time anyway? His brain worked rapidly, untangling itself from the chemical shitstorm of adolescent confusion the redhead always seemed to bring on. Half a glance over his shoulder revealed Jimmy still staring at him, vaguely mystified, propped up on his elbows like an attentive dog not sure if he would need to follow his master to someplace new. It gave Gary a pang of confidence, and his eyes ghosted down to where cum was still drying on his chest.

Disgusting. Smith turned to his own clothes, knowing they were also spotted with more of the same self destructive evidence. Without asking, he ripped Jimmy's school sweater off a top shelf and threw it on the end of the bed by the lunkhead's injured foot.

"The way I see it, we've got two options." Gary turned towards the other boy with resolution, before tucking deft fingers under his vest and ripping the incriminating stains away from himself. "One. We stop doing this and go back to hating each other like normal rivals. We fight _man-to-man_ to settle the score _once_ and _for all,_ and see who the real king _really_ is, here. I like watching your stupid face _bleed_ , so I'm a _fan of_ option one."

Gary ghosted closer, grabbing up Jimmy's school sweater and pulling the cleaner green knit over his head. He appeared again on the other side in a fluff of static, and spent a moment smoothing his hair back into immaculate pleats.

"Option Two." He paused, looking Jimmy over to make sure he was still paying close attention. "We meet _once_ a week, _every_ week, at the Lighthouse. It's nobody's business but ours. _Outside_ the Lighthouse, _everything_ stays the same. Our politics don't have to change. I'll _still_ hate you. I might try to _push_ you down _the stairs_ , if you don't _watch your back_. But, we'll have the Lighthouse."

Standing up straight, Gary tried to sweep his face clean of any emotion at all. "...I'm a fan of option two."

  


**JIMMY  
**

  


Finally, a fucking _plan._ As he listened to Gary enumerate the options before them, there was a comfortable settling behind his eyes. It was nostalgic, and frankly really, really nice, to have Gary around to do the thinking for him. Jimmy was still the king of Bullworth—he wasn't giving that up, and he was good at it—but if he was honest with himself, he didn't really like it as much as he thought he would. He liked being peacekeeper, and he liked being liked. He liked feeling powerful and secure. He didn't love figuring shit out. He didn't love the stress and responsibility that came with having to make decisions. At the end of the day, he was king because there was no one else he trusted to run things. No other kids, and _certainly_ no adults. He still definitely didn't trust Gary with running the school either, not with his proven track record of chaos-fostering and bloodsport, and if he still had designs there Jimmy would oppose him with gusto. But for some other things... personal things, maybe. It was nice, is all, just to be told what to do sometimes. And while he didn't trust Gary, he also kind of really did.

Jimmy's stomach did a little flip of excitement as Gary peeled the vest off over his head, and he sat up a little further, thinking maybe—but no, he was in shirt sleeves for only a moment before pulling on Jimmy's weathered green school sweater. _Great_. He let himself back down with a small sigh. Guess it was still going to be a naked party of one, today.

Oddly, though, his still not-quite-flaccid dick gave a little twitch at seeing Gary wearing his clothes. It didn't make logical sense—it was a school uniform after all, it wasn't like he'd never seen Gary wear something similar. As he half-listened to Gary's second option, putting on his best "I'm paying close attention" face, he catalogued how the sweater fit him differently, looser in some places and tighter in others, and his stomach did a base little flip of excitement thinking about Gary walking around smelling like him. He knew Gary would projectile vomit and probably set the sweater on fire with himself still in it if he had any clue what Jimmy was thinking about, so he tucked that thought away for later as Gary came to the point of option two.

Of which he was a... fan? Shit, what was option two again? What was option _one_? _God damn it Hopkins, think_. He sat up and crossed his legs, buying himself time and hiding a slightly reenergized erection with one fluid motion. He scratched his head again... something about the light house. Oh yeah. Oh, _wait_... Oh. Yeah.

His face flushed bright red, and he snapped his head up to search the now mask-like face of his step-brother to see if he was joking. Gary's face was blank bordering on contemptuous, with only a telltale trace of color on his pale cheeks, either from the subject matter or left over from their previous exertions. He was serious. He was suggesting an _arrangement._

Let's see... engage in violent warfare with Gary, or engage in violent warfare with Gary _and_ get to fuck him regularly? Yeah, _not really a contest_.

"Yeah," Jimmy croaked, then cleared his throat to get rid of the sudden embarrassing crack.

"Uh, I mean, yeah," he corrected, his voice now controlled lower to a respectable, even pitch. "I like option too. I mean, I like option two too."

 _Smooth, Hopkins_.

  


**GARY  
**

  


Realizing his mouth was exceptionally dry, Gary attempted to control his desire to swallow loudly and blow his barely adequate cover of calm. Instead, he let the feeling of his throat tightening take over, and kept his face a blank neutral.

The boys stared at each other for a few seconds, digesting their freshly made agreement.

"...Fine." Smith barked once, his eyes still glued to Jimmy's figure. "It's decided. It'll be our secret... You _do_ _know_ how to _keep_ one of those, right?"

Gary paused for dramatic emphasis, opting for sarcasm to mask suddenly noticing how pink Jimmy's already ruddy face had just gone. It made the taller boy's heart beat a little faster, thinking that he had James on the ropes for a change. After what had just happened... after _everything_... it was reassuring to know Hopkins _still could_ be thrown for a loop. Even if the cost was using this especially dangerous loop.

"A _'secret'_ is when you _don't tell anyone_ what you're doing. _Nobody. Not_ little Petey, _not_ your little girlfriends, and _definitely_ not your mommy. No townies, not even that garbage dump, Edna. You get it? The SECOND you tell anyone about this without agreeing with me first, I start pouring _bleach_ down your throat when you're _asleep_. OK? So SHUT your TRAP."

Briefly, Gary wondered if he really needed to hammer that point home as hard as he just had, but figured after a beat that he was better safe than sorry. Jimmy could be surprisingly dense... _about everything_. (Christ, was Gary already forgetting what kind of stupid animal a Hopkins was?) And they would both end up in a place _far worse_ than a dark church closet with Smith Senior if this new, extremely sensitive information were to leak out at an inappropriate time. Gary sucked on his tongue and worried, in a general sense, if he hadn't just dug his own grave. But there wasn't any going back now.

"...God, this room is disgusting." The darker boy broke eye contact at last, to cast a glance around the filthy room. He needed to leave this place. Jimmy's bedroom resonated with an aura of filthy teenage stupidity that was dangerously close to infecting Gary's mind. (Or had it already?)

"You have _no clue_ what a broom is, do you? You're a slob, Jimmy."

There was nothing else left to say. What else could there possibly be? For a tense second, the silence took over again as they eyed each other, before Gary's body kicked in with an executive decision. He would remove himself from this situation until he had enough space to consider what he had just proposed. Vaguely, he was aware that it was insane in some distant sense, but his overwhelming desire for the stupid idiot across the room was so powerful by now that it was beginning to block out any logic or reason. Gary made a face like he had just smelled something terrible, and abruptly turned for the door.

Fingers on the bolt, Smith paused. He stared at his fingers, not daring to look back over his shoulder. Everything about this was crazy. Gary _felt crazy_. But there wasn't anything he could do to help it now.

"Thursday. After evening classes. I'm... not busy then."

With a sharp snap, Gary drew the lock, cracked the door, slipped through the hole, and slammed it shut behind him.

Gary walked briskly in the direction of Harrington House, past scurrying students taping prom posters to the walls, past scowling prefects, past the janitor emptying bottle rocket shells out of a trashcan, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. His mind floated somewhere in the future, far above himself in the stratosphere, as on a cosmic level, the young villain attempted to piece together a grander picture. This situation was a puzzle, a jumble, a tangle he needed to straighten out. Why had he asked Jimmy to meet him? Was it true? Did he really, truly, _actually_ feel... _feelings_... for a _Hopkins_? It was _too ridiculous_. It had to be something else. But what could it be? A dizzying merry-go-round of possibilities, doubts, and accusations scrambled together in a deafening static. Only one thing was clear. He _wanted_ to see Jimmy. In the Lighthouse. In a closet, in a trailer park... it didn't matter _where_. Only that one thought remained constant throughout the storm of Gary's reasoning.

Occupied by his own dark thoughts, Gary barely noticed Gord Vendome approaching from the opposite direction, coming down the walkway from Harrington house with an ocher silk scarf wrapped around his neck. They bumped shoulders at the entrance to the courtyard, and the foppish teen let out an indignant squawk.

"I _beg_ your _pardon_!" Gord spat over his shoulder, before he froze, and his mouth fell slightly open.

Gary grunted an excuse and continued down the walk, still deeply preoccupied by his own thoughts. His gloomy figure stalked quickly towards the dorm, wearing a school sweater belonging, very obviously, to _Jimmy Hopkins_.

 _And_... AND?

Gord gave a disbelieving sniff, scandal dripping down his face and dropping his jaw in dumb awe... _smelling just like_ Hopkins after a locker room tryst.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Digging deeper still into the psyches of these characters! Gary slowly unravels at the concept of accepting someone as an equal into his Private World Of One while Jimmy confronts uncomfortable family issues from all sides and seeks balance in a world suddenly flushing itself down a dirty toilet. What does Petey know? Where are the happy honeymooners now? And what will happen behind closed doors once a bargain is struck? More to come! Stay tuned for another episode sometime soon of this filthy teen melodrama.


	5. Lighthouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy and Gary's private agreement to begin meeting at the lighthouse has a tumultuous kickoff.

 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

 

The smell of the ocean had never been very far away from Gary Smith as he had grown up in Old Bullworth Vale. It carried on a fresh westerly wind through the attic windows of his family home, clearing out his palette and pulling his eyes out towards the distant horizon on those damp, shadowy childhood afternoons years ago. Gary remembered the few times he had achieved moments of clarity as a small boy... He remembered the stillness which came with the feeling of sea wind on his cheeks. But he had set aside that calm as he grew older, as easily as discarding a book he no longer found that interesting. There had, after all,  been quite a lot of other things happening in his young life at the time. Observing the water was, hierarchically, somewhere around the same level of bought attention as the smell of his mother's special perfume, or remembering the name of the man who trimmed the hedges. Inconsequential. Brief.

Then gone. Gary didn't give the smell of the ocean any deeper thought until later, when a change in location had brought him to boarding school.

 

He thought now that, maybe, the salty ocean wind was why some poorer parts of town smelled like mildewing trashcans. (Or, was it a smell more like rotting paper? Muddy boots after tracking through human waste?) Whatever it was that made poverty smell, it stank. Some neighborhoods just stank, and Gary supposed the ocean had it's hand in the whole affair. Even Bullworth campus smelled bad sometimes. Stagnant sea air clung to the buildings further inland. The permanent gloominess of living this far north up the coast was only rivaled by the perpetual dampness of things. The freshness of the ocean smell was just a better gauge of the kinds of places Gary wanted to go.

 

 

 

Here, for instance, where Gary stood beneath the lighthouse, he smelled fresh sea salt. He smelled funnel cakes from up the coast, wafting from somewhere beneath the ferris wheel at Billy Crane's Traveling Carnival, but he didn't smell garbage. The beach was relatively clean, and it's close proximity to neighborhoods that could afford the finer things meant an odoriferous reminder of his poor choice in location was a lesser worry on a much longer chain of concerns. He didn't have to bother with feeling judgy about his surroundings. Instead, his full focus could be bent entirely to the reason for his presence here in the first place. 

 

Jimmy Hopkins was _late_.

 

The teenager stood at the end of the pier, hands in his pockets.  Gary's eyes tracked left and right across the waterline in the distance, as an insistent, chilly wind whipped at his clothes. It was evening, and the sky had already started to turn a harsh orange, bathing the beach and the little spit of shops just inland in a blanket of brown and yellow shadows. It was almost pretty, in a way. Gary had never been partial to the color orange. He found it tacky, and somewhat nauseating. But there was a distant strip of bright pink along the snap of horizon just beyond the water that Gary couldn't help looking at. It was brazen in a way he liked, almost arrogant as it pushed up against the weight of the rest of the sky. It reminded Gary of himself. And it was easier thinking about how soon it would give way to purple, then blue, and then finally black than it was to remember that he was anxious. To think about Jimmy Hopkins, and that today was Thursday... _that Thursday_... and that Jimmy Hopkins w _as inexplicably absent_.

 

 

 

Gary had arrived an hour previously with the intention of beating Jimmy to the chase. He had inspected the inside of the lighthouse for the first time since Parker Ogilvie had given him a bloody nose when they were freshmen, over an accusation that Parker kissed his own sister. Gary noted with some mild surprise that the blood stain was still there, on the plank floor by the cricket bats mounted on the wall. In fact, a lot about the inside of the lighthouse remained much the same, Gary observed.... if not downright neglected. Dust collected in the fur of mounted taxidermy, and inside the mouth of the ratty bearskin rug thrown haphazardly across the filthy floor. Most of the scotch and wine bottles behind the bar were long since empty, but one or two still sat sealed on a shelf too high for Gary to reach without the assistance of a chair. The only _fully and truly_ disgusting element of the shady hidey hole was the naked mattress in the corner, no doubt the leftovers from when this place had still been in exclusive service to the preps... back from when it had been a place to go blow coke up your nose and pay a high end prostitute to perform obscene acts while dressed in a school uniform. The kinds of things Gary assumed his father had done when he had been in school. The younger Smith had curled a lip contemptuously at the stained sleeping arrangements, not daring to think of _himself_ bent over it, and had exited for the pier. 

 

 

 

 

 

Jimmy was _late_. Though, was that really so unusual? Of _course_ he was late. Had Gary expected him to arrive 5 minutes early, showered and shaved, with a smile and a bouquet of his usual purloined flowers? No. There was no way. Jimmy was _often late_ , Gary forcefully reminded himself. Like he had been to the rehearsal wedding. Like he had been to countless classes and appointments. The scarred teenager wondered if, sometimes, maybe James didn't even bother showing up to some things at all. Anxiety began to creep in more quickly at that last notion, as if through the cracks in the pier, taking a subtle hold of Gary's nerves.

 

 

 

The indignant disbelief that he was being stood up lingered just outside Gary's acceptable chain of thoughts. Though he tried to dismiss the notion entirely, it refused to fully dissipate, like smoke you couldn't clear out of a room. The teenager frowned into the cold wind, not bothering to try to control which direction his hair blew, knowing it was a pointless activity. For Gary, this entire pathetic debacle was just one sad exercise in trying to ' _let go_ ', so the _least_ he could do would be to let the wind blow where it wanted to blow. And yet it was still painful, somehow, to relinquish power even in that way. He wanted to raise a hand to smooth his hair back down, and resisted it. Gary felt a crackle of static ripple across his brain, and his fists involuntarily clenched in his pockets, then unclenched, only to clench again in a repetitive pattern. It took a little of the edge off, but only barely.

 

It had been a strange week. Gary mulled over it, using the memories to convince himself that James _would_ , eventually, _be here_. He had practically drawn a gigantic red arrow on a map for Jimmy to follow after the events of the last few days. Violence and harassment were normal daily occurrences at Bullworth Academy, but there was the general population, and then there was _Gary Smith_.

 

After their ill-advised consummation on the floor of Jimmy's disgusting dormitory throneroom, Gary had found it... _difficult_... not to immediately start flinging trouble Jimmy's way. So far, he had changed Mr. Galloway's gradebook to flunking Jimmy out, had hip checked Jimmy down the stairs of the main building while his arms were full of books, _twice_ , had gotten Jimmy banned from five out of seven of the clothing and record stores in town he liked to frequent, and had glibly informed the nerds that ' _Jimmy doesn't even really LIKE Grottoes & Gremlins_.' The library had been up in arms over Jimmy's blatant disrespect of their game for some time, and even more so, his apparent disdain for all of them on a moral, personal, and hygienic level, as revealed by their king's extremely knowledgeable step-brother. (Forget ' _psycho_ ' step-brother. Or ' _revenging_ ' step-brother.)

 

Gary's grand Erdrutschsieg for the week had come in the form of Damon West. It took almost no effort at all to convince him to switch places with Fatty Johnson during Jimmy's usual sparring sessions. Fatty had practically wept at the opportunity to get out of gym, and Damon didn't love anything other than Ted Thompson and football. (And maybe Ted Thompson's footballs.) It didn't take much to ruffle Damon's feathers. A few glib bits of gossip, a few cutting whispers between classes. A gorilla, like all the rest of the football team. Gary hoped with a vengeance that when Jimmy finally did ride up on his stupid skateboard, that he'd have another black eye. One that Gary could actually shove his thumb into this time.     


 

 

It was hard not to still be angry. _Jimmy_ was _late_. He was _late_ , and this was _important_... More important maybe than either of them were capable of internalizing at the moment. But as Gary turned a shoulder towards the road, he couldn't help but picture Jimmy's flushed face. Gary remembered that startled, even gobsmacked expression that had painted him a cherry red as they stared at each other in the dormitory. Jimmy, who unbelievably had no shame arguing while _completely naked_ , had flushed like a fire engine at the suggestion that they... establish an agreement. Was it something _really_ that out of character for James? How many other _arrangements_ had he had before, like theirs? That thought brought on a strange twist in Gary's stomach, though it made him think of another night, too. The night of their parent's wedding.

 

The more Gary ruminated on that night, the more his feelings snarled into an indecipherable ball. Jimmy's rage had been sincere, and though Gary both loved and hated the image of James bleeding on his terrified father, he wondered still, exactly who that anger had been for. Maybe it had been for Gary alone, as preposterously martyr-esque as that sounded. Or maybe it had been for James alone, finally brought to a breaking point in his own stupid mind after the grueling events of that week. But it seemed the most reasonable to assume it had been a little for _t_ _he both of them_. They had _both_ been equally screwed by the entire situation, and that sentiment, all by itself, was starting to have a begrudgingly affectionate effect on Gary.

 

Nobody had ever done anything even remotely close to expressing solidarity with the youngest Smith. He had, simply, always been alone, even when he had hated it. And so, that single moment, in the closet with his back pressed up against the wall to get out of the way, and heavy gulps of hot air in his lungs as Jimmy's yelling indecipherable filled his ears, Gary had felt.... _something_. Something _other than_ anger. Something he couldn't think his way out of, for once. Something closer to, what he imagined, friendship might be like. That night, for the first time, unbelievably, incredibly, _unthinkably_ , Gary had begun to understand why... _some people_... might, ill-advisedly, kind of _like_ Jimmy Hopkins.  

 

Gary huffed into the salty wind and folded his arms hard across his chest. His frown softened a little around the edges and he took in a long, slow breath. 

 

He would wait for James... _for five more minutes._

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

 

   
_HONK HOOOOOOOOONK_

 

The horn blared and brakes screeched as Jimmy swerved to avoid the oncoming car. He sped blindly past, his thick legs pumping the pedals of his bike to take him faster down the road, away from pursuing prefects and toward Old Bullworth Vale. He turned his head briefly to survey the damage but found he couldn't make anything out—he'd been momentarily blinded by the car's headlights, and his vision consisted of indistinguishable, over saturated gray shapes. He would have to take it on faith that the commotion had stopped any pursuers as he left campus. At the very least he no longer heard the puffing of breath and the shouted threats following him down the road. 

 

He wasn't about to let something as petty as temporary blindness slow him down, and he picked up speed zooming down the hill along the sea. He stood up on the pedals and coasted past the main pier, and as he approached the lighthouse he didn't even bother braking—just leapt off the bike, wheeling his arms to keep his balance as he hit the ground at a run. Riderless, the bike kept going through his legs, the sound of the wheels running over the boards  _kathunk kathunk kathunk_ until it plunged off the edge of the walkway to land safely in the sand below. 

 

Jimmy skidded to a halt at the safe house door, but his momentum didn't carry him inside. Instead he stopped dead, his hand inches from the door handle, a small tremble twitching his fingers. He was suddenly aware of his heart thudding in his chest—just from the exertion, of course—and he cast a quick look around to see if anyone was watching. It would royally suck if anyone were to witness him following Gary into a clandestine meeting. But the pier was unlit, and his vision still afflicted with flash blindness, so he couldn't make out a thing. 

 

As his fingers curled around the handle he wondered one last time what he'd find inside. An irate Gary, probably, or at least an elaborate retributive trap. His ears strained for the sounds of swinging pendulum blades and automatically firing poison darts, or more likely just a gang of surly, coked up teens waiting for a brawl. But he couldn't hear anything over the sighing of the ocean, and the nearby ambient noise of the town, as the citizens of Bullworth finished nightly errands, returned from restaurants and movies, and otherwise shuffled and murmured throughout the night. 

 

There was one last scenario he could imagine inside, of course. That Gary was in there... waiting. On the bar, or on the bed. It was an image that had kept him very _busy_ the past few nights. And most mornings. And sometimes during bathroom breaks. It was an image he'd actively swallowed (ha) all day just so he could get to class without drawing a lot of unwanted attention to himself by way of his lower half.

 

Anxious lust finally spurred him to action, and with a wet shirt and pink ears he burst into the dusty beach house to find... nothing.

 

His shoulders sagged, and his hand fell off the door handle to hang dejectedly at his side. Of course. Gary had already come and gone, too impatient to wait. That, or maybe he'd never come at all, having changed his mind—probably wisely—about going through with this arrangement. Gary  _had_ been particularly zealous this week in his cruelty, dangerously skirting the headmaster's rule against their interaction quite a few times in order to make Jimmy's life difficult. Jimmy, the idiot, had imagined it was just Gary's idea of foreplay, when really he'd just been trying to send Jimmy a message— _Not going to happen, moron._

 

As he was considering face planting onto the mattress for the night (or at LEAST changing his clothes before heading back to campus), he heard an irritated cough from just over his shoulder.

 

A relief bordering on euphoria flooded his body. Unable to keep the stupid grin from his face, he whirled around and pulled Gary inside by his lapels, swinging the door to with a slam.

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

 

 

 

 

" _Eugh,_ get _off_ of me, you stupid puppy! Why are you so _wet_??"

 

Gary shoved Jimmy's chest hard with a forearm once the exuberant teen had dragged them over the threshold, his old gut reactions taking precedence over any other plans. A heartbeat passed where Gary gathered his dignity back from the surprise manhandling, and he gave the other boy a judgmental look. Like a hard-nosed grandmother, the look chided. It questioned, _'where have you been?'_

 

Watching Jimmy's enthusiastic grin begin to slowly slip from his face as he stood dripping a puddle on the floor by the door, Gary was hard-pressed to keep the sour pucker on his face. What he _did_ feel at this particular moment in time was... _relieved_. He would never admit it, of course, but when he had turned at the sound of thundering footsteps on the plank boardwalk, he had let out an imperceptible breath of air he hadn't realized he had been holding. For a second time, the sight of Jimmy Hopkins unexpectedly and erratically bursting onto the scene had brought with it the strangest sense of security. Jimmy had come, after all. Despite.... well, despite _a lot of things_. More bad things stacked up against this ill-advised situation than benefits. But it was too late for those kinds of thoughts now.  James hadn't forgotten about their arrangement. Or worse, _ignored_ it. 

 

Another beat passed as Jimmy's harsh breathing filled the lighthouse. Gary snorted, looking him up and down.

 

"You're _late_ , Hopkins. You think _my_ time isn't as valuable as _yours_?"

 

 After a delayed beat where Gary very clearly was mulling over something, his hands suddenly dipped below his belt line to yank up his school vest. _'It's ok. Just let go_ ' his mind whispered in a dark back corner, helping him ease the cloth over his head. He balled it in his hands, spending another moment to look at the green wadded cotton, before he flung it at Jimmy's face. The other boy caught it as it fell back against his shoulder, looking down at it in confusion then back up again.

 

"You're drenched. Wipe your face off at least."

 

In Smith Terms Of Affection, the gesture was pretty high on the scale. A year ago, the mere notion of Jimmy Hopkins rubbing sweat into the fiber of his uniform would have filled Gary with Shivers of Revulsion. Now, though it bothered him, he found he could impart the gesture without the neurotic desire to wash his hands too many times in a row. Instead, he sucked on his tongue with a sour look as he stared expectantly at Jimmy. When he didn't immediately move to do so, Gary rolled his eyes and turned towards the bar.

 

He didn't need to pretend with himself now, either, Gary understood. As he moved to dip under the Bar's swinging door, he glanced back over his shoulder to the thick-muscled teenager still at the threshold. Jimmy's flushed skin was still considerably paler than the mahogany inlays and other bruised woodwork found in this retired Gentleman's Retreat. He even looked a little bit like he was radiating, the faint mist of his own sweat more offering the sense of a glow rather than a physical one. It was a look that Gary realized with a dull jolt really suited Hopkins. He looked... healthy. _Alive_...  Gary's brain fumbled awkwardly for a moment, frozen on the other side of the bar as his brain worked over that hiccup. _He looked... alive_? Was that seriously the _best_ term he could come up with?? This dating thing was going to be more difficult than he had anticipated.

 

The taller boy's stare abruptly snapped away, and turned towards the liquor shelves behind him.

 

Not that they _were_ dating.

 

"I could have spent _a lot more_ brainpower on figuring out ways to get you _arrested_ this week, you know." Smith casually announced, as he turned his head down to find a stool to climb up onto. "You _really_ think it's a good idea to be late to a... _prearrangement_... with the person who you had _committed_ and is still hunting for _revenge_? What if I... you know... hit you with a _baseball bat_ , or... a broken bottle or something? While you're asleep?"

 

Reaching one long arm up from his perch on a stool, Gary grabbed one of the last unbroken bottles of scotch off the tall, dusty shelf. With a hop he landed solidly back on the ground again, and twisted the wax seal of the cap until he heard a crack, before gently separating the top from the bottle. His eyes flickered up to meet Jimmy's, and lingered there unabashedly for long seconds.

 

No lying here. This wasn't some kind of casual pissing contest. Like they had casually just run into each other. Like this was some kind of mistake. Like they hadn't both been obsessively dwelling over this moment all week. It was almost humiliating to pretend otherwise. Gary had known it all along, but looking at Jimmy just made it more real. This was about messing around. No need to pretty it up with a bunch of cute insults. He chewed silently on the insinuations, feeling his blood heat up.

 

"....Not that I'd sleep here." he added, his eyes ghosting almost nervously down Jimmy's torso.

 

Gary was the inexperienced one here, by far, and that in and of itself lent a constant level of subangxiety to the taller boy's psyche that had spurred him to pull the scotch off the shelf in the first place. He had _suggested_ this _arrangement_ , yes, but that by no means diverted any of the actual terror associated with the event itself. He would need this. And that realization had taken a lot, especially for a person who fundamentally, morally, and spiritually stood against the serious imbibing of intoxicants of any kind. Because if Jimmy was entertaining any kind of plan that he would be _in charge_ of what happened here, he was probably going to be wrong. 

 

Nervous hands found Gary tapping the scotch lid on the bar in an anxious rhythm, a miniature electrical surge in his brain borne of anxiety forcing the repetitious action. When it was over, he took a breath, took a chug, and hefted himself up onto the bar. With surprising ease for someone so long-limbed, Gary swung his legs over the other side, settling his pristine oxfords on the bar stools and leaning hard with the bottle of scotch over onto his knees.

 

Gary stared at Jimmy more intently, really examining his crevices, tracing his contours in an almost provocatively arrogant manner. It didn't really matter WHY Jimmy had been late. Some serf required his help, no doubt. Or Crabblesnitch wanted to blubber tears of praise on him, or Petey needed a diaper change. Whatever. It didn't matter. Not right now, at least. There would be time for that argument later. Now was the expedited military execution of a rudimentary and disgusting pastime that for some reason, Smith was somehow incapable of ridding from his mind. All at once, Gary looked as if he had come to a decision.

 

 

 

"You already ruined my vest, moron. Just take _your clothes off_."

 

A dubious command, given almost as if to a dog.

 

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

 

 

 

Fucking _finally._ Finally Gary was using that supernatural command he alone seemed to have over Jimmy for the forces of Good, i.e. their mutual sexual benefit. Jimmy realized he'd been waiting for it—a command, some direction—the entire time Gary had been monologuing about all the Trouble he had mercifully spared Jimmy from this week, or whatever. It certainly didn't _seem_ like he'd spared Jimmy much, but he wasn't about to start an argument now. Not when everything still felt so tenuous. Yeah, he'd gotten Gary here—Gary was _here_ , he'd _come here_ , he'd _waited_ —but Jimmy still fully believed Gary could go rocketing out the door at the slightest provocation. Gary was _smarter than this,_ though Jimmy certainly couldn't claim that for himself, and they both knew it. And yet, here they both were. Alone. Together.

 

Jimmy finished wiping his face with Gary's vest, pausing imperceptibly to inhale the motes of Gary's smell woven through the cotton fibers, before crumpling it and flinging it into a corner. Without skipping a beat, he began unfastening his belt, his fingers fumbling a little over the clasp. His stomach was roiling with excitement and uncertainty, and he managed to get all of his clothes off in a few seconds without embarrassing himself too terribly. His t-shirt did get stuck around his massive skull for a moment, the combined moisture of sweat and shower causing the flimsy fabric to cling to his skin. 

 

Once thus divested, Jimmy stood waiting for further instructions. His naked skin burned with a painful mixture of desire and embarrassment. He clenched his fists and squared his shoulders, tipping his chin up to meet Gary's eyes, feeling fleetingly like a soldier before his commanding officer. Strong, but subservient. A flashing memory of Gary from Halloween two years ago in that uniform... his ears flushed with pink, and his nostrils flared. He'd have to ask Gary if he still had it, later.

 

But for now, Gary remained silent. His face was unreadable, like pale, polished stone except for the flitting of his shining, clever eyes across Jimmy's body. He was thinking, obviously, his brain whirring away a thousand miles faster than Jimmy could even comprehend, but nothing was making its way onto his face. Was he happy to see him? Disgusted? Aroused? Perched like a stone gargoyle on the bar, a dusty bottle of scotch in his claws, he loomed silently over him while Jimmy stewed with uncertainty. It suddenly dawned on Jimmy that this was maybe some sort of ritual of humiliation, or at least of establishing hierarchy. In order to feel comfortable, Gary had to be superior. Immutable. Unobtainable.

 

Of course, it occurred to Jimmy that if he let Gary have his way, they could just be like this all night. Staring each other down from opposite sides of the room. Gary was the brains, okay, the orchestrator, and Jimmy let him tell him what to do—he _let him, okay, that was important_ —but Jimmy was the muscle, and he made sure what Gary wanted to happen actually _happened._  They were ultimately two parts of the same machine, Jimmy thought, as he took a step toward Gary. Without him the gears in Gary's brain would whir away into the night without either of them moving an inch. Gary would retain his comfort zone, but would he be _satisfied?_

 

Jimmy took a step forward, then another. Watching Gary all the while for signs of a reaction—approval, disapproval—and receiving nothing but the faint curl of his full, dark lip. Soon he was standing between Gary's legs, splayed atop the barstools. He left a careful inch of space between his body and Gary's on all sides, careful not to brush against him anywhere, even though at this proximity his skin felt magnetized to Gary's, an almost palpable energy crackling between the empty space. He tipped his face up to look at Gary full on and clenched the muscles of his throat, a small cocky smile playing at his mouth. 

 

Without breaking eye contact he pried the bottle out of Gary's hand and put it to his mouth, taking a few slow swigs. The liquor burned going down, and he struggled to keep the grimace from his face as the fumes singed his nose hairs. He removed his lips from the bottle with a small pop, and felt the warmth travel through his blood to each extremity. He felt instantly loosened, and he set the bottle onto the bar beside Gary, his bicep brushing briefly against Gary's inner thigh. 

 

"Alright, big shot," he said slowly. "Now what?" 

 

A promise from the night that set this all in motion echoed soundlessly between them. 

 

_Didn't I already say I'd do whatever you told me to?_

 

 

 

**GARY**

 

 

 

 

The first and most obvious thing about all of this which seemed to continuously ring in Gary's ears was that this, for the first time, was a scripted interaction. All their other... _liaisons_... had been somewhat spontaneous up until this point, though thoughts of such things by now undeniably burbled away pretty much constantly in the pressure cookers of both their minds. The other times had been born from moments of frustration, and moments of anger. From his perch on the bar, Gary quirked his head at an angle as he stared thoughtfully at Jimmy's flush face. There was a lot about this that he needed to sort out. He tried to gather the different threads in his mind, to consolidate them, braiding them together into a singular purpose.

 

Without even seeming to register his own movement, Gary lifted a questing hand and brushed inquisitive fingertips along Jimmy's freckled jaw, ghosting down his throat. So recently, _so recently_ , Gary's touch would have been motivated purely by violence. This close, it would be easy to get one over on James and just wrap his grip around the freckly throat there, squeezing until the thrumming pulse he felt swelled into angry spasms. This change in Gary's approach? It was... worth a thought. (Or ten. Or _ten thousand_.) But his fingers recoiled again into a loose fist as a dark frown took him, looming close enough to the other boy's thuggish face to feel the wet heat rolling off him.

 

It wasn't exactly that he had _forgiven_ Hopkins. No. In fact, Gary definitely had _not_. There _was no_ forgiving the person who was responsible for... well... _everything that Jimmy had done_. And it was irritating even now to look at Jimmy's flushed face, and realize that he was too obviously entranced by their current situation to even make the connection back to why this was wrong, to have a care for the violence of their history. But, then again... why should he? James was a physical creature. It hadn't been _Jimmy_ who had been burned by overuse of a defibrillator. It wasn't _Jimmy_ whose arms had pussed with infected track marks. Jimmy had roamed the halls of the asylum under cover of darkness, but he had never slept there, eaten there, lived there. He had never been given the opportunity to lose his mind there. Though Gary recently had been forced to admit to himself that they had more in common than he would like to accept, there were some things a Hopkins would just never understand.   

 

Anger thudded in Gary's throat, making him clench his teeth and popping a vein in his neck. He welcomed the familiar feeling, knowing it would ground him more. He had to look at the facts, here. He had to itemize them.

 

One: Jimmy Hopkins was a traitor and a deceiver.

 

Two: Jimmy Hopkins had, inexplicably, rescued Gary from what would have been a very painful beating at the expense of the Hopkins reputation, for apparently no reason.

 

Three: Jimmy Hopkins was directly responsible for Gary's admittance to Happy Volts Asylum for the period of one terrible year.

 

Four: Jimmy Hopkins merely being here right now was grounds for both of their expulsions.

 

Five: Jimmy Hopkins, again inexplicably, was in a willing mood right now to do whatever Gary told him to do. Just like Gary had always wanted. Like he had been waiting for, wishing for, dwelling on, and fantasizing about as he laid on his stiff metal bunk in his tiny asylum cell.

 

Six: The level of their physical interactions here had not been discussed yet, but Gary could hazard a guess at what Jimmy expected.

 

Gary blinked at the other boy, his brain rapidly shuffling through a few different thought processes, before he cut loose a little delirious, disbelieving chuckle. Was this real? Jimmy's flinty squint was aimed directly on him, and a glance down below at his half-mast revealed a not-so-subtle enthusiasm to continue to close the gap between them. Not for the last time, Gary's grimacing grin grew wide enough to flash the gap in his teeth as he thought of how unprecedentedly insane this relationship was. And then, all at once, he stopped grinning.

 

He was _tired_ of _thinking_.

 

All the time. Gary was tired, in a profound way, of the constant grind of wheels whizzing loud enough to make him deaf. Of the way his hands moved in nervous patterns without his consent or approval. And most of all, he was tired of thinking about _this_. About this stupid orange haired gorilla who had come _far too close_ for Gary's liking. Closer than almost anyone else he had ever met. They said it was wise to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but what did that mean if you had never had any friends to begin with? Who did that enemy become?

 

"...Fuck it." Gary finally muttered in a clipped voice, bending his head tiredly once and running a calming hand up over his scalp. When he looked up again, his eyes glittered with something that both seemed equal parts dead and dangerous. His scar flushed red as the color in his face drained. It wasn't like he could back out of this now.

 

"You're a... _young socialite_ , right Jimmy-boy?" Gary leaned slowly back with a forced casual air, until he laid propped up with his elbows flush against the wood surface of the bar. "Why don't you apply on me some of the _skills_ you've learned out in the wild...?"

 

With an intensity to his gaze, Gary pointedly looked down at the way his khakis were beginning to tent beneath his fly, then brought his eyes back up to Jimmy again. He quirked an eyebrow, goading the other boy, as if to say ' _Do you have a problem with this?_ ' Though progressing from handjob to blowjob was a big step for them, it was making the suggestion, (no, the _order_ )  that was really enough to start Gary's pulse racing. His dick made a rudimentary twitch inside his boxer-briefs as his eyes lidded. Even now, despite Gary's snarl of noisy thoughts, there was something basely enjoyable about giving Jimmy an command and being almost entirely sure he would go through with it.

 

_"...Like a good boy."_   


 

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

 

  
Even though, because the universe was supremely fucked, there was nothing Jimmy wanted precisely more than to get his mouth on whatever part Gary would let him, the right side of his face spasmed briefly with annoyance at Gary's unbelievable smugness. His desperate need to put Jimmy down at every possible second was incredibly tiresome, and if they were in any other scenario Jimmy would be impelled by the forces of pride and fragile teenage masculinity to flip him off, shout him down, or at least shove him in a trash can.

 

 

And yet. 

 

He couldn't deny the electricity running through him at seeing Gary like this. Reclined, imperious. A king in repose. And with it, another, darker thrill, that came directly from Gary's tone. His confidence, his command. He was beginning to understand that there was a part of himself that _wanted_  to relinquish control; it was just that he'd never met anyone to whom he would entrust it. 

 

And now he was going to do so with his ego maniacal, recent mental patient step-brother. Sure, Hopkins. _Go with that._

 

 

 

Jimmy paused for a good moment as lust and pride, physicality and reason, id and ego waged their little war in him—each side instrumentalizing the phrase _fuck Gary_  with vastly different inference and intent. Not realizing that even as he deliberated his hands were already snaking up the outside of Gary's thighs, gripping them lightly through the fabric of his trousers. 

 

He'd come this far—met him here,  _disrobed on command_. The game had already been set in motion—why not keep playing along? On the outside they were enemies and equals—in here, within the confines of their _arrangement_ , he could afford to bend the rules. What was the harm in a little fun, between boys? Among _brothers_?

 

His wandering hands were already pushing up the fabric of Gary's shirt, scraping his lower belly with bitten nails. Jimmy's face burned red and he avoided meeting Gary's eyes as he made short work of his belt, briefly bracing Gary's hips upward as he slid the long strip of fabric out from around him. The buttons of his pants were small and fiddly, and he slowly fumbled them open, his thick fingers growing increasingly clumsy under Gary's watchful eye. 

 

Giving up on the last button entirely, he hooked his fingers into the waist of Gary's pants and boxers and jerk-slid them down Gary's hips, exposing his dark pubic hair and reddening cock. He didn't take them all the way off (although he certainly _wanted to_ , wanted _all_ of Gary's _stupid, clammy skin_ against him _immediately_ ) because he sensed the disparity between their levels of clothing was a power play on Gary's part—another aspect of the game.

 

Jimmy flicked his eyes from the exposed flesh back up to Gary's face, as if to ask _Are you okay with this?_ He wouldn't _really_ ask, not now—that would be cruel—but he would bet this was a first for Gary, despite all the bravado.

Gary was the first to break the eye contact this time, turning his head to the side with an almost disgusted expression. _Get on with it._

 

Message received. 

 

Jimmy wet his lips and ran his left hand up Gary's side to knead at his bony hip. Then, propping Gary's cock upright with one thick fist, took its hardening length into his mouth and began to suck.

 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

 

 

 

 

Gary had been thirteen, the first time he had chosen to hazard the experience of getting blown.

 

She had been fifteen, with straight black hair, and with a compulsive way of smoothing down the immaculate pleats in her perfectly ironed uniform. Gary had liked that neurotic tic, the way her fingers spread out in a white fan to push away imaginary wrinkles in a firm sweep, again and again. He had liked that she didn't smile too, except, of course, shyly, at him as they passed sometimes in the hall. A girl whose name he had forgotten, but whose grades he clearly recalled. Straight A's in all her main academics, but a C in physical education and a D in shop. She had been smart, but overly conscious of her own awkwardly growing body. Clumsy like a colt, one day destined to grow into a dignified thoroughbred.

 

She had liked him. She had, actually, liked him _quite a lot_ , he recalled, and from a distance, the concept of seeing her pristine facade crack like a flat of melting ice on the surface of a pond had in the end, been too tasty a lure to ignore. 

 

Smith's memory of their interlude was muddled. He remembered the cold air on the backs of his thighs as she knelt in front of him in the dark of the alley behind the girl's dorm. Gary remembered looking at her with distant interest, regarding her trembling fingers with clinical disdain. It had felt... gross. Clammy, like cold slime and hot teeth and the awkward jolt of his body making uncomfortable demands of him at odd times. It ended quickly, and with little fanfare. What Gary DID remember, much, _much_ more clearly, was her face _afterwards_. Her tears slurred in a hot, wet smear of cum and snot across her face, as Gary punched through her surface ice again and again in a hushed whisper. He had rehearsed the moment. He had wanted to hurt her feelings. It hadn't been difficult to discover weak points he might exploit. He had been curious to see how far she would follow him, before hitting a breaking point. The answer, he was disappointed to discover, was.... not far at all. She fell behind in her classes after that. A month later, her parents transferred her to a boarding school in Rhode Island.

 

Girls, Gary had learned a year after the Tidy Girl's transfer, were all much the same. He made the Dean's List, performed with terrifying panache as Germany in the school's Model UN, aced regional competition with Bullworth's yet still assembled Swim Team, and made weekly appearances as a dark horse underdog to spar at The Glass Jaw with the regulars, and yet no victory he earned had yet come close to that first time with that girl and her shattered expression on her knees in the dark. Breaking girls on the floor like spiking crystal figurines was easy and satisfying, more satisfying even than his academic successes, but by the time Gary turned 15 it had become abundantly clear to him that there was _no real challenge_ anymore in the breaking _itself_. It was the pain which he personally induced that was attractive, not the challenge. He had been actively seeking out and perfecting the application of pain since then.

 

The unsettling complexity of the problem with Jimmy Hopkins really seemed to emanate most whenever they touched. Now, for example. Right now, Gary was feeling... _troubled_.  Memories of that dark alley, that girl, and her broken, tear-striped face quickly receded, in a way they never ordinarily did. Now was when he should have been meditating on reasons he allowed things like this to continue happening. Now was when he should have been meditating on pain, on control.  Instead, when James begrudgingly set to the task of blowing Gary, it took everything Smith had upon moment of contact to contain the deep-seated groan he knew lived perpetually now at the back of his throat. The sound swelled, before being reigned in again. Instead, his right hand clawed in hard tracks at Jimmy's shoulder, the rest of his weight thrown back hard on his other elbow. He sucked air in through his teeth until it whistled, like he had been burned.

 

"... _sssshit_ ," Gary hissed after a second of breathlessness, as his carefully clipped nails dug hard into Jimmy's back. Ignoring every fiber of his instincts to immediately bolt, the youngest Smith attempted to dissuade his own panic by focusing on what was real.  Currently, he was absolutely sure of only a few facts: The mouth on his dick was definitely not A) _tentative_ , B) _cold and/or slimy_ , or possibly most importantly, C) _attached to a girl._ This mouth was _, inexplicably, absolutely, inexorably, attached to a one James ShitForBrains Hopkins._ And acknowledgement of all these facts, merging together, were definitely pointing in a pleasurable direction. Yeah, good, ok, yes... It felt good. This didn't have to be scary. 

 

It felt good. Great, even. (Possibly, _too_ good.) Gary clenched his teeth and rolled up his spine, his palm wrapping around the back of Jimmy's skull to push him farther down. In that moment, the idea flickered across Gary's mind that maybe, _very very much maybe_ , he had wanted this kind of thing all along, instead of carrying on with his presupposed asexual status quo. All he had really needed to actually realize it, was a mouth like this on his cock. But then again, he had never been attracted to someone (frankly, _another boy_ ) in quite the same way as he was to James. This situation was laughably different in too many ways, and so the idea lost itself again in the jumble of Gary's mind, even as he tried to reach after it, like important papers scattered on the wind. He knew he had an obsession as well with Peter Kowalski, knew he liked to tease him, liked to even _flirt_ a little if the occasion presented itself, but Gary had never _wanted_ to... _never considered_... with Petey....  _implied_ , sure, but for cruelty's sake. Maybe once or twice he had seen a twinkle of hope in Kowalski's eyes and it had made him think of the Tidy Girl smiling at him in the hall. But when he had pushed Petey on the ground earlier that week, he had done it with visions of Jimmy dancing in his head. Always, _always_ Hopkins. As perennial as the sun.

 

 

 

"... _fuck_ , WAIT, no, _stop_ , stop--" Gary abruptly barked, and with an excessive force the teenager folded in half and shoved Jimmy up by the shoulder, roughly pushing him away. He practically fell off the bar in a jumble of sharp angles, before righting himself with hands that hastily tucked himself back in his pants, half-buttoning them up, half letting them hang open to opt to sweep back his suddenly sweat-drenched bangs as he turned back on his heel.

 

"This- _This isn't_ \--" The teen stuttered, sweat gathering along his neck. It wasn't right. It felt... _too good_. Gary didn't like how uncomfortable it made him feel. Simply submitting to the new sensation seemed too intrusive, like too many things about this fucked up relationship had changed, too much, too fast. Jimmy doing what Gary told him, it was _supposed_ to be _good_. It was _supposed_ to make Gary feel powerful. Instead, it made him think about what happened when people actually followed his whims. Gary thought of Petey's retreating figure, full of fear and sadness. Gary thought of the Tidy Girl, and all the girls he had delighted in making cry after that one, even Beatrice Trudeau, who looked at him in the hall like he carried around a backpack full of dead rats. Everyone LOVED Gary, until the exact moment that they didn't.   

 

Gary stuttered over his sentiment pointlessly for a few more seconds, looking at naked Jimmy with accusation. Why did this _bother_ him so much? He WANTED to be here... WANTED to... in a way he couldn't with Petey, or any of the others he had spiked on the ground. So, what?

 

The teenager stood breathing heavily, staring James up and down, as finally, the twist ending to this absurd Long Con of a romance presented itself without any fanfare, clearly and all at once.

 

Gary no longer wished for Jimmy's destruction.

 

He blinked, several rapid flutters in succession, digesting this information and internalizing it in what from the outside manifested merely as an odd quirk of the head. He would never fully forgive James for what he had done, but Jimmy's punishment had already been effectively doled out. Their situation, here together, _that_ was punishment enough. More than enough punishment for the both of them. For their families, their school, and their own minds.

 

James stood half-flush, irate and pink as he waited with obvious impatience for Gary to overcome whatever new psycho hiccup he was currently experiencing. Precum spotted his chin, unwiped. "What's your problem, _psycho_? You wanna do this or not? You're hot, you're cold, _what's_ the deal?"

 

Gary recognized that look. His therapist gave him that look sometimes. The look that said Gary had just run into oncoming traffic and needed someone to tie a rope to him and yank it back, so he wouldn't keep repeating the same offense over and over. It was a look about losing patience. Gary didn't even feel paranoid by seeing it on Jimmy's face. Instead, in an ass-backwards kind of way, it was oddly comforting. Gary could smash Jimmy on the ground ad nauseam, and here he would remain. Jimmy liked the fight, he liked the challenge, just as much as Gary did. And there was security in that, too. Unlike the girls, like Pete, like the teachers and tutors and nurses and therapists he had broken, Gary saw very clearly now that, for the first time, Gary appreciated the _challenge_ _of Jimmy_ more than he appreciated inspiring the pain.

 

" _What's_ the _deal_?" Gary snapped, suddenly confident once more. He held his shoulders more aloft, dignity quickly returning as peace of mind trickled back. "The _deal_ is, you're _too cocky_ , Hopkins. I knew somebody needed to take you down a peg or two, but I didn't realize I was the _only person_ who could do it. Well, maybe except for _poor mommy_. But she's not doing us any good in the Swiss Alps, right? You don't listen to me for _how long_? And _now_ you start? Don't be such a pushover, your hedonism is showing, it's unattractive."

 

The teen released a judgmental huff, clicked his tongue once and shook his head, as if looking at a pathetic diorama or a failing test score. Everything felt... so much _clearer_ now.

 

Like a wild cat through the grass, Gary slowly and intentionally approached the other boy. The hand that had previously clawed at James now pushed him gently back, until the redhead knocked aside bar stools and his spine came in contact with the bar. Faintly incredulous at himself for what he was doing, Gary rode the wave and sunk down on one knee, then to both. His face flushed, pink wrapping around his high cheekbones to reach up and touch the tips of his ears, and he gave Jimmy a look which loudly broadcasted 'THIS MIGHT NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN, SO ENJOY IT NOW' before he wrapped Jimmy's half-hard dick in his hand and brought it experimentally to his lips.

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

 

The utter hatred with which Gary Smith was looking at his dick threatened to rip a laugh out of Jimmy, but he thankfully was able to keep it in. He wasn't about to give Gary any inclination that he was laughing at what was happening. Gary might think he was laughing out of derision—he may not be familiar with the fact that laughter is the most common symptom of shock. 

 

 

Jimmy held himself stock still as Gary angrily experimented with the feeling of Jimmy's cock in his mouth. He was genuinely afraid to move for fear of dispelling this, the latest whim of the inscrutable Smith—that, or more likely losing his dick for good between the unnaturally sharp canines of the youngest Smith. Something about snatching victory from the jaws of defeat ran through his head, and he shuddered to keep from laughing. What the fuck, honestly. 

 

Looking down at Gary, his cock twitching to life more at the knowledge of his dark, wet lips around him than the actual sensation, Jimmy found himself glad that his dick wasn't that big. It was pretty thick, yeah, so that was probably uncomfortable, but it wasn't that long. He still remembered sucking his first cock, and he sometimes marveled that he'd ever gone back to dick at all after that _debacle_. Despite the fact that he'd later developed quite the taste for oral (pussy still being his favorite, if he was forced to rank), his first time on the giving end of a blow-job was a less than fantastic experience. 

 

He'd been thirteen, for one thing, which was just a bad age to be sucking dick at all in hindsight. Especially an older guy's. Jimmy'd run into him in the school locker room. He was a sophomore or something in high school, on the basketball team, while Jimmy was just trying out junior football. He'd caught Jimmy's eye after he caught Jimmy staring at his cock, and things had gone from there. It was a double introduction, really—one to sucking dick, the other to the fascinating and frustrating world of hooking up with "straight" guys, where every interaction was as blusteringly macho as it was ultimately fragile.  

 

The guy—Rick, Jimmy remembered his name with a sudden sour taste in his mouth—had been _huge_ , dick-wise, and _very_ overconfident about his sexual performance because of that. He'd just assumed that girls and cock-appreciative boys alike would worship and salivate for his monster dong because it _existed_ , not because he'd done anything approaching sexually gratifying other than just waving it through the air and inexpertly thrusting it in whatever hole they'd let him near.

 

Jimmy'd given him a few hand jobs—in the locker room, behind the gym, one ill-fated night at Rick's place when he'd whined for two hours to try and get him to do anal (he hadn't). Mostly he was curious about how a dick that big even _worked._ Was there more cum? Did it take longer to get off? Was there a biological connection between dick size and shitty personality? Jimmy was something of a scientist, particularly in that stage of his sexual development. He'd been obsessed with sex, trying to figure out what he liked and what he didn't, trying to classify himself as gay or straight or whatever other idiot labels had seemed to important to him at the time. 

 

Jimmy locked his knees to keep from wavering as the flat of Gary's tongue swept the underside of his cock, and he remembered the numbness of his own knees as he'd knelt on the locker room floor that night. He wondered if he'd looked as _determined_ as Gary looked now. He remembered feeling small, and _hating_ that. He remembered looking up over the curve of Rick's belly to try and see his face, how it felt like his eyeballs were rolling into his brain and he'd had to stop before he got a headache. He remembered Rick was handsy, pushing insistently on the back of Jimmy's head to get him to take more in. 

 

He folded his hands and pinned them between his back and the edge of the bar. He wanted to touch Gary, now, but knew from experience how fucking _irritating_ it could be, to have some idiot pawing at your face while you just tried to get him off as efficiently as possible.

 

Gary had about half his length in his mouth now, and Jimmy had the impression he still wasn't really sucking because he was just trying not to _bite._ Jimmy'd only been able to get half of Rick's dick in his mouth at all, and that was with Rick's insistent hands pushing it halfway down his throat. Suddenly it had bumped up against Jimmy's gag reflex, and Jimmy had "accidentally" bit down a little. Rick had jumped back, cradling his (completely unscathed, by the way) cock and leaving thirteen-year-old Jimmy to wretch against the tile. Rick had lobbied curses and taunts at him as Jimmy'd struggled to get a hold on his trembling body. Now, Jimmy was almost thankful that Rick had been such a raging asshole. It had certainly made it a lot easier to get up and sock him in the mouth, leaving him bleeding and naked on the cold locker room floor. It ended up with Jimmy getting expelled from that school—the zero tolerance fighting policy, coupled with Rick's _daddy_ being on the school board, meant that Jimmy alone took the heat. The part about him face-fucking a thirteen year old were conveniently left out of the school report. Weirdly, Rick  _still_ left horrible drunk voicemails on his home phone from time to time. 

 

Jimmy was pulled from his reverie by the realization that Gary's broken nose was just about nestling in his pubic hair. 

 

" _Shit_ , Gary," Jimmy said uselessly, and his thinking came to an end, perhaps permanently, as he realized his dick was now fully in Gary's mouth. Gary wasn't really sucking, just holding it there with a look of intense concentration, the corners of his mouth stretched perhaps painfully around it. 

 

Jimmy's mouth fell open stupidly as he watched Gary work and settle around his dick. It was a full body procedure. His hands were clawing into Jimmy's thighs, holding them both steady. Gary's thick, dark brows were drawn down together in a furious V. And as Jimmy lost thought, he also lost self-control. His hands unpinned from behind his back, and he watched as his right hand snaked down to press a deep thumbprint into the bunched skin between Gary's eyes. 

 

Gary batted him viciously away, but Jimmy couldn't be deterred. He'd have to take his dick out of his mouth and fistfight him off at this point. He grabbed at Gary's attacking hand and held its wrist firmly, then reached out to perform the same motion with his left. Not bringing him closer, not pushing him away—just working a slow, hard circle on the skin between his eyes. Digging in harder and harder, slowly pushing the dark brows apart, down, relaxed.

 

Gradually he felt Gary's face soften into his touch, and with it, a knot in Jimmy's stomach seemed to come loose. His scarred face finally, minutely relaxed around Jimmy's cock. Jimmy felt the soft, wet tissue of Gary's mouth and throat envelop him, eliciting a brief, ragged moan. 

 

He scraped his thick fingers across Gary's scalp, pulling and massaging the oily skin beneath his hair, his earlier self-promises forgotten. He began carding Gary's hair through his fingers, gently pulling in experimental places. He hooked the longer hair at the top of his skull around his fist and pulled harder, exposing the long, white line of Gary's neck. He watched it move, brushing it with his other hand as he swallowed, a thin line of saliva dripping down the corner of his full mouth. 

 

Suddenly two thoughts formed in his mind, though really they were less thoughts than fierce, emotional convictions. The first was that seeing Gary on his knees was _good._  It was _right_ and _true_ and _justified._ He imagined Gary's own knees going numb, wondered if he would pull off when uncomfortable or if he was suffering through something to try and get Jimmy off. Jimmy hoped for the former, for Gary's sake, because Jimmy had every intention of never letting Gary off his knees _again_ if he didn't fucking _fight for it_. 

 

The second thought came in like a bulldozer, the two of a one-two punch while he was momentarily disarmed by the first thought. And it was that  _surely_ Jimmy's dick was the first Gary'd ever sucked—a white fury temporarily blinded him at the thought that there might have been another, so overwhelming that Jimmy was left afraid.

 

The sudden intensity of feeling left him visibly shaking, and that combined with the sweat beading on his back had him slipping down the bar. He caught himself with one hand, preventing a very unflattering crash to the ground. With the other he pushed Gary roughly off him, earning himself an unpleasant (and deserved) scrape of Gary's teeth.

 

"What's _your_ deal, Hopkins?" Gary spat, as Jimmy lowered himself gingerly to the ground. 

 

"Sorry," he offered weakly, stumbling for an explanation. One that didn't confess that the mere thought of Gary's mouth around another cock had just made him physically ill. "I just got... overstimulated."

 

He glared at Gary as he huddled back against the bar, wrapping his hand protectively around his sensitive, spit-slimed cock. Gary glared back, sitting back on his heels, bringing the back of his hand roughly over his mouth. He looked _debauched._ His hair looked completely insane. There were blotches of red flush all up his neck, face, and ears, and his collar was wrecked (Jimmy didn't even remember doing that part). His already big mouth looked stretched, loose. Bigger, if that was even possible. 

 

The cumulative effect was so overwhelming, Jimmy felt some circuit fry in his brain, probably for good. Slowly he got to his feet, his full cock bobbing heavily against his thigh. 

 

Temporarily relieved of his ability to speak, he stepped forward and grabbed Gary's shirt by the back of his collar. He faintly registered Gary protesting verbally, the feeling of his blunt nails digging savagely into his wrist as he dragged him over the floorboards and threw him against the side of the old bed. 

 

He squatted down until his face was inches from Gary's, matching glare for glare. ( _Why are you both so angry?_ a voice in him asked softly. _Because everything about this is_ infuriating _,_ another answered.)

 

"Clothes _off_ ," he spat. 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

 

 

If Gary hadn't already been obsessing over the dull ache of his jaw, or the _obscenely viscous_ texture of precum as he tried to rub it off of his face, he would have seen Jimmy's fist coming. He could have anticipated the hard hand before it slammed down on the back of his neck, scruffing him by the shirt like a dog grabs another dog to drag it through the dirt. As things were progressing, however, Gary did _not_ anticipate the movement. This whole debacle was way, _way_ too new, too many flavors and textures and sensations, ringing in his stomach, tingling across his scalp, and raising a fine prickle of hairs across his arms. Gary therefore, to the surprise of exactly nobody, instinctively lashed out in reactionary violence at the hard fist, jogged extremely rudely from his full-body flush as soon as Jimmy hauled him across the splintering wooden planks of the lighthouse floor. And yet, only indignant angry burbles rose to the surface, Gary's usually eviscerating insults lost to the moment. 

Smith hit the side of the shitty bed with a gasp and sunk hard to the ground, his tailbone striking the floor at an awkward angle and forcing a winded grimace up across his face. Again, the surprise rush of the violence robbed the teen of his opportunity for reaction. He _should have_ been spitting insults through clenched teeth. But Jimmy was there again too soon, _too close_ , close enough to feel the other boy's constricted, short breaths, and to see the black pupils of his dark eyes shrink down to fine points. Was he angry? Did it actually honestly make a difference? Right now, Jimmy Hopkins was decidedly _terrifying_. Smith turned his flushed face up to meet the ruddy orange expanse of freckles he had hated so intensely, until so recently, and tried to gather himself.

"...Clothes _off_."

At first the words didn't register. A beat later, _they did_ , and Gary's face cracked into a righteous, angry grin. was that... _an order_? He lingered in the moment with a disbelieving breath stuck tight behind his teeth, amazed by the simple audacity of the command. Was Jimmy _serious_? An airy, dry laughter Gary realized a moment too late belonged to him punctuated the pregnant silence, daring James to push it further, to say anything else. The scarred teenager let that immediate reaction roll over him, _through him_. He wanted to tell James to go _straight to hell_. Who did he think he was? _What_ did he think _this_ was? That he had the agency to force that issue? But as Gary remembered what they _actually_ were doing here, (not to mention wiggling his jaw in mild pain,) the nervous, cruel smile slid from his face. He stared directly into Jimmy's eyes in an attempt to reclaim some dignity, but doubt was now beginning to wash over Smith, instead of anger. His eyes moved up and down Jimmy's figure, very clearly now masking a barrage of questions he no doubt was asking himself, a thousand puzzles that needed sorting out in order to come up with a definitive answer. 

 _Was it worth the fight?_

  
Gary's calculating eyes narrowed in suspicion as he cast his mind ahead. What if he said no? Because, right now, James was looking at him like the bull in the china shop. (How many times had he used this exact analogy? Too many times. Decidedly.)  At the moment, nothing about Hopkins exuded weakness. Everything about him was infuriatingly direct. And now, maybe the wisest of all times to recall, Gary remembered how hard Jimmy's punches could land. How he fought like an animal backed into a corner, without morals or reservations. Gary imagined saying no, and imagined Jimmy ripping through Gary's shirt like cheese cloth. He imagined what would happen to his body if he tasted his own blood while he felt the way that he did at this very particular moment. And then he _knew_ , that it _wasn't_ worth the fight. That place was too dark. If he went there right now, it would swallow him whole, and he might not be able to climb out again. It reminded him of the way he thought in his cell back at Happy Volts, when patients cried bitter tears in the dark, deep in the isolated solitude of the night. And despite how much Gary irrefutably knew that he very secretly liked Jimmy Hopkins, he also couldn't trust him yet.  Almost, but, _not_ , _quite_.

Gary knew the violence got him hot. Everything about the girls he had tortured, the strings he pulled, the hundreds of petty hurts he had peppered Peter Kowalski with over the years in order to tear him down, all of it lead to the same place. It gave Gary a rush. In his more heavily medicated days, it was a psychological rush most of all. _Now_? It was still psychological, but that particular brand of self satisfaction now had an infuriating way of manifesting in the form of a stupidly hard dick. (This almost 100% entirely thanks to the relative proximity of a certain squinty orange cave troll.)  The violence made Gary's throat swell, and his blood pump, but _first, before anything else,_ he needed to get through this liaison without busting in his pants. OR, otherwise experiencing some kind of psychological meltdown. (A hazard he had learned quickly was far too close for comfort when dealing with Hopkins.) This interaction was awkward and strange enough so far to have kept his erection in check by unsteady nerves alone, but something Horrible and Secret whispered to Gary in the dark places of his mind that he _liked_ Jimmy in his mouth, liked the ache, liked the _power_ , more than he had ever thought that he would. So much, in fact, that he was ready to burn a student alive in a trashcan if it meant that James would fist his hair again and make that breathy groan that had hurt on such a fundamental level.

But, _calm down Gary_ , calm down, _baby steps first_. IF they could successfully do this thing, (and it was still a _huge_ IF,) _then_ Gary would think about what he _really_ wanted. About how he wanted to break Jimmy's nose on one of the fallen school bells. About how he wanted to blow him against one of those bells, up on the roof where everything had changed forever. About how he had entertained the idea of fucking him in their parent's bedroom at _least_ a hundred times. Or in the principal's office after midnight. Or how many insidious ways he could leave a self-destructive trail of breadcrumbs to scatter in front of that redhead with the tits that Jimmy would never shut up about. So that she would leave him behind, so that he would _need_ a friend. How he would tell everyone that Jimmy had hepatitis of the dick. Or that he wanted to lock Jimmy in a closet in a wing of the Smith mansion that never got cleaned. Or that he wished they could sit together in the library sometimes, and Gary could tease him about not knowing how to read. About all the horrible things he could do to Jimmy to pull him down, to make sure that they would always be with one another, binding them irrevocably together as _insepara_ _ble as brothers are surely meant to be._

With an expression somewhere halfway between murderous and cannibalistic, Gary Smith slowly lifted his hands to his shirt and methodically unbuttoned it. The cotton weave came away moist from his damp skin, flush with excited sweat. He ripped it off and flung it over Jimmy's shoulder, where it caught and hung on the butt of a mounted rack of guns. A beat passed where Gary breathed over his rising and falling stomach in overly intense concentration, eyes trained unblinkingly on Jimmy, until an afterthought seemed to flicker across his mind like a flash of lightning, even as he kicked off his shoes and his hands went to his pants.

"If you think you're _fucking_ me, you really _are_ a moron. I keep _thinking_ , you know, _thinking_ , all the time, that... maybe, you... might... _not_ be. A moron, I mean. But, if you _do_ think that? I can't help you. _Nobody_ can help you."

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

 

 

 

"Oh _believe me_ , I _know_ ," came Jimmy's retort, and he tipped forward to cover Gary's mouth with his own. 

 

Oh, he _knew_ he was beyond help, Jimmy thought as he moved for all intents and purposes into Gary's lap, pressing the sharp back of his head into the mattress with the force of his kiss. That much was painfully, painfully obvious. He'd just withstood a nauseating wave of rage at the idea of Gary sucking a cock other than his own. Which, first of all, was totally untrue ( _right?_ ) and wouldn't be any of Jimmy's business if it was ( _it wasn't true though_ ) ( _surely_ ). 

 

It was more that Jimmy didn't _do_ jealousy, with _any_ of his sexual partners. He liked to think he was better evolved than that. He saw who he pleased, and he expected and encouraged others to do the same. Not even with Zoe, the one person he'd had great sex (and more than that, actual _friendship_ ) with more than anyone else—he knew she saw other guys. Hell, plenty of their own postcoital conversations involved drinking and talking shit about recent hookups. He remembered her demonstrating one particular exploit with a banana, causing him to fall out of bed laughing.

 

Zoe was by far the closest thing he'd ever had—and probably ever _would_ have—to a real  _relationship,_ and he knew with certainty and even some pride the amount of dicks she sucked that weren't his. And this was... what? What _was_ this? It wasn't something he could just ask. Gary was impossible to talk to, too clever and repressed and cruel for his own good, much less Jimmy's. Moreover, there was no way he would receive an answer that would satisfy this overwhelming  _greed._

 

No, Jimmy's hope for help had been lost long ago. When was the tipping point?, Jimmy wondered vaguely, as Gary bit a little too hard into his lip. Maybe when his reaction to not seeing Gary for six months was to pull him off in a pool shower? No, he was lost before that—maybe when he felt Gary's fingers slip beneath his waistband in a church closet, whispering cruel nothings in his ear. 

 

No, before even _that_. Before he even pushed Gary against his kitchen wall and told him he'd do _anything_ he wanted him to, he'd spent a year haunting Happy Volts asylum for—what? To "check up on him," which Jimmy could now admit to himself meant just to be _near_ him. Gary was _different._ He'd always had a dangerous power over Jimmy, from the first day they'd met. And that made Jimmy _angry_ , to cover up the fact that he was _afraid_. 

 

Jimmy pulled off of Gary's mouth, noticing with deep satisfaction how Gary chased him. He'd come quite a long way from wiping Jimmy's spit on the back of his hand. He pushed himself back onto his heels and rose to standing before extending a hand to Gary. His step-brother looked at him with irritation, considered for a moment, but then took it anyway. He rose to his full height, and Jimmy let himself be annoyed at their height difference for approximately two seconds before shoving him backward across the bed. 

 

Gary let himself be pushed, undoubtedly having seen this coming, which was _also_ irritating, but made things easier. He'd apparently decided not to fight, for which Jimmy was grateful. Not that he wouldn't rise to the occasion, of course. It was just that he was more in the mood for cum in his mouth than blood at this particular moment. 

 

In another second Jimmy was kneeling on the bed between Gary's legs, his large, hot hands resting lightly on Gary's inner thighs. He moved one hand to stroke Gary's dick lightly, absently, and looked down to appreciate the look of his own cock hanging full and hard near Gary's ass. Jimmy grinned a predatory grin, and he felt Gary's body stiffen slightly beneath him.

 

"Chill out, Smith," Jimmy laughed, a little mockingly. "I'm not going to fuck you. That would be one hell of a day, to blow your first dude and take it in the ass the first time in one go."

 

There it was again, the thought pulsating in his head like a rotten tooth. Slowly he lowered himself to his belly, wrapping one arm up under Gary's thigh so that his pale leg was draped across Jimmy's freckled shoulder. With his other hand he propped up Gary's half-hard cock. He licked his lips twice, trying and failing to contain this feeling that felt so awkward in his body—this bodily conviction that he would straight up commit _murder_ based on the answer to his next question. 

 

"That  _was_ the first dick you ever sucked, right?" he asked, being careful not to look Gary in the face. He then sunk his mouth over Gary's cock, in a convenient excuse to avoid facial expressions.

 

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

 

 

The sharp intake of breath on contact rendered Gary temporarily speechless, and he held all the muscles of his stomach incredibly still and tight, until the strain of it made him tremble. He watched Jimmy's flush face bob up and down in methodical pulls, and the reclining teen had to remind himself to inhale, to _actually breathe_ , before he let the now stale air rush again out of his lungs.  What was this feeling? Gary felt drunk, his face still tingling with the warmth of Jimmy's spit so recently caressing the inside of his mouth. For long seconds, the stupidity of a Hopkins-induced brain fog hung low over Gary, making his reaction time slow in turn with his labored breathing. 

 

"... _What_?" Gary eventually loquaciously countered, still half drunk from the kiss. "...Why do _you_ care?"

 

Was Jimmy Hopkins, King Of Noncommittal Hookups, _actually_ concerned with Gary's physical track record? Was it a joke? Was Jimmy _teasing_ him? The fog receded a little, cunning cutting through clean and hot. What was he _implying_ with that question? That Gary was no good? That his technique was for shit? Gary wouldn't have given the comment a second thought if it hadn't been touched on twice. Not once. _But twice_.

 

  
"... _Curious_ , Jimmy-boy?" Mildly delirious, a little giggle cut past Gary's teeth, followed very closely by half a charmed smile.  Could this be _jealousy_?  The smile ghosted across his open mouth and lingered in the corner.

 

"You're the resident _expert_ here, right? Aren't you? Don't you already have your _homo PhD_ or something? Think we might have _shared_ a few of the _same fluids_?" Gary's delirious giggle swelled, became a hitched chuckle, a noise both in pain and amused at once. "Couldn't you just make a _public inquiry_ on the town hall about it? Hasn't _everybody_ already seen you naked?"

 

This was too funny. Was Jimmy really afraid that Gary had promenaded around campus with a sign on his back that read 'STICK YOUR DICK IN MY MOUTH' on the first day of school like every Hopkins apparently did? Did he assume that Gary was the same? That he arbitrarily picked any random student out of the unwashed masses to then rip their pants down around their ankles? 

 

If James gave Gary a look of derision, Gary didn't see it. Gary breathed a hot grin through the crack in his teeth, then sucked it back again as Jimmy suddenly doubled down on his task, this time with much more pointedly ruthless efficiency. The immediate realization that James was _avoiding_ _eye contact_ somehow sucked the rest of the air from Gary's lungs, and made his dick twitch helplessly in the other's firm grasp. Did Jimmy _actually_ care? If he did..? Then, the diversionary method he was choosing was... unsettlingly efficient. Quickly losing grasp on the minutia of those questions, Gary battled to maintain himself against the onslaught of physical sensation. The smile vanished from his face. And like everything else about their relationship, here, there was a problem.

 

Like before, the intensity of getting blown by THE Jimmy Hopkins was quickly becoming overwhelming. In fact, the exact suction and pressure currently being applied might also be used to uncap a particularly stubborn lid from a jar of jam. When Jimmy's hot, soft mouth sunk excruciatingly low, his tongue swept out to touch Gary's balls, and the scarred teenager sat half up to grasp at the dirty mattress like a lifeline, trying his best not to make a sound like a tortured animal. Without consenting to it, his face twisted closed and his free hand slid around the back of Jimmy's neck to urge him on. Jimmy's wide palm ran up Gary's thigh, pulling it hard against his shoulder.

 

A stupid barrage of thoughts accosted Smith then, each one less and less nuanced than the one before. Primarily, what Jimmy had somehow expertly corralled here was exactly what he thought it was. A teenager who, for all his cleverness and venom, had never in his life been especially fond of physical contact. Of literally _any kind_.  Of _course_ he had never sucked another dick. Arriving at the simple concept of touching James sexually to begin with, AT ALL, had taken longer than most of Gary's complete relationships. Then, of course, there were germs to consider. Sanitary oversights were probably at the tip top of Gary Smith's list of Unforgivable Indiscretions That Can't Be Forgiven. Meeting here, in this filthy lighthouse, was already a stretch. Letting Jimmy _suck his dick_ was a leap of faith. Sucking JIMMY'S dick had been a _miracle_. That Gary _liked_ sucking it was a major revelation he hadn't yet adequately prepared himself to address.

 

Gary had tried his best to hide his naivety up until this point, fairly successfully masking it with cruelty, and, probably most crucially, _clothing_. But if their locker room shower liaison was anything to go on, Gary was in dangerous territory right now. 

 

Correctly understanding his own danger, an expert twist of the tongue was all it took to make the rest of the world then frighteningly narrow down to a small window in which only Jimmy existed. His mouth. His face. And God, what a face. A face Gary had seen covered in blood more times than he hadn't. A red, blunt, angry face full of vigor and determination. And betrayal. Always, the sting of betrayal burned sharp hot tracks through Gary's guts when he looked at Hopkins.

 

Violently, Gary shoved forward, pushing Jimmy down his stomach until he was kneeling on the ground again, both of Smith's hands wrapped tightly then around the back of the other boy's skull. He clawed at the other boy with a savage anger as he leaned on the musty mattress, furious there was nothing to hold on to. James was too thick, too much muscle, paired with broad flat stretches of freckle and flesh. His skin didn't even show scars like Gary's did, from that fateful crash through the skylight into the principal's office. Jimmy was clean of _any evidence_ from that night. Only his extremely unfounded and neurotic desire to put Gary's dick in his mouth showed any legitimate sign that Jimmy hadn't forgotten what had happened between them. How intimate they had become as they had both tried to strangle the life out of one another.   

 

" _Shit, Jimmy-_ " Gary's voice surprised even him, gritting through clenched teeth an octave too low, and then he was cumming, and he couldn't stop himself from finally cutting loose a string of acidic gasps, sounding like a burnt man pulling his hand back from a bonfire. 

 

 

A new sensation Gary was learning to like: the calm stillness that comes after the storm. For a few seconds, Gary sat quietly panting, Jimmy's head having inexplicably made it off his dick somewhere during the collapse, and now pressing into the gentle curve of his femur bone beneath corded muscle. With one last exhalation, Gary laboriously leaned back, and saw a strip of cum across Jimmy's flushed and irate face. Smith paused at the look, wondering briefly if he might have lost the teensiest amount of self control there at the end. But then the thought was gone, because, Jimmy Hopkins with cum on his face was something Gary instantly knew he would never in a million years ever be able to expunge from his memory. This was a look for James that was going directly into a deep and permanent vault.

 

One more bark of surprised laughter punctuated the moment, before Gary looked around the room with a disbelieving swipe of his hand through sweat-soaked bangs. When he turned back, he hooked a thumb in the corner of Jimmy's bruised mouth, pulling at it briefly before taking his hand back to examine the viscous white fluid, then popping the digit into his own mouth.

 

"... _Not_... a bad look for you, Jimmy-boy."

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

 

For a long moment, Jimmy didn't register anything other than his wildly beating heart and the rushing of blood in his ears. He had to rest his head on Gary's thigh and just calm himself down, scowling as his deoxygenated brain feebly processed horrifying new information. 

 

 

 

He'd just let this shithead  _cum_ in his  _mouth_.

 

He was on his knees again. (Would it always end this way with Gary? Would they always force each other to their knees?) He'd just let Gary manhandle him in a way that was normally unbearable for his pride. Why was Gary different? This was supposed to be familiar territory. Jimmy was supposed to be on _top_ here. Just moments earlier he'd felt so in good, so in control, on his belly with Gary's heel slipping across his back. Why did it always _end_ like this?

 

 

 

He had _never_ let someone do that to him before.

 

Gary's cum coated the inside of his mouth and throat, making his tongue feel wet and fuzzy at the same time. It was really a miracle that he'd been able to not puke as hot psycho DNA hit his gag reflex, Gary's fingers clawed behind his ears, anchoring his head as he rode Jimmy's mouth through orgasm. 

 

Jimmy himself had never even cum in someone's mouth before. He'd been asked to once or twice, but he could never bring himself to do it. It felt too demeaning, too... personal. Which meant... Gary had reached a sexual milestone before Jimmy had. 

 

He wanted revenge. He wanted to stick his cock so far down Gary's throat it made him choke and weep. He wanted Gary's spit on him, Gary's bile, Gary's blood. 

 

And he would have gotten all of that right then, too, if he hadn't just shot his own wad on the floor. 

 

It wasn't his fault, ok? Who knew Gary made those _sounds_? Who knew it was possible for him to say Jimmy's _name_  like that? Not _James_ , not _Jimmy-boy_ , just _Jimmy_ , uttered low from somewhere as yet untouched, deep inside. 

 

Did Gary remember the humming whine Jimmy'd made around Gary's dick as he brought himself off with a measly three or four strokes, moments before Gary was cumming in his mouth? Jimmy sincerely hoped not. That he'd done this for Gary was enough. How much he'd _liked_ it, well, that certainly didn't need to be addressed. He'd revealed himself quite enough already with that jealousy debacle.

 

Then Gary's thumb was in his mouth, a simple gesture of dominance and familiarity so uncharacteristically un-thought-out, so natural. Jimmy looked up at him, pliant, felt the used skin of his mouth struggle to regain its shape as Gary swabbed some cum from inside him and put it back in his own mouth almost thoughtlessly.

 

Jesus _christ._

"You like the taste?" Jimmy heard himself asking, his own voice surprising him with how wrecked it sounded. 

 

"Because there's a lot more where that came from," he said, rising somewhat shakily to his feet. He'd meant it to be much more sarcastic—a way of starting the _you just came in my mouth_ conversation—but instead, it sounded like a promise. 

 

He grasped the back of Gary's head and brought their mouths together again. He swept his tongue around his own mouth, gathering some of Gary's cum before pushing it into his mouth. He felt it dripping out of the corners, down the sides of their faces, and felt his spent dick twitch. This was the first time, Jimmy registered faintly, beneath the calming static that this brought, this was the first time he'd kissed Gary _after_ sex. And Gary was allowing it—leaning _into_ it, a leg wrapping around him absently, lazily. 

 

If Gary thought they were done here, he was sorely, sorely mistaken. It was barely eight pm, and Jimmy had at least two more in him before his body collapsed for the night. 

 

But first, he was going to kiss Gary for exactly as long as he let him. 

 

* * *

 

 

When Jimmy woke at 6 am, Gary was gone. He swept his hand over the place he vaguely remembered Gary collapsing hours ago, and found it cold.

 

Sitting up on his forearms, he swept the room with bleary eyes for evidence that last night had actually happened, besides the various pleasant aches and bruises on his head, neck and chest. And he was rewarded—he saw the bottle of scotch, now empty, lying on its side on the bar. He saw the discarded pizza box from where he'd ordered them pizza around midnight. He grimace-laughed remembering how he'd answered the door naked on Gary's urging, wearing only a pair of massive ladies' sunglasses. Gary had wanted him to answer the door naked, covered in blood and brandishing the broken scotch bottle, but Jimmy'd pushed back on that. As a part-time food delivery boy himself, he had empathy for the noble profession. As it turned out, Gary had called him a pussy and they'd had a little scramble of a fist-fight before delivery, so there was blood anyway. He saw the evidence of that too, dried red-brown on his pillow, and on Gary's.

 

Satisfied, he nestled himself back into the pillows and wondered when Gary had left. Right after Jimmy fell asleep, most likely. 

 

It was probably for the best, he told himself, as memories of Gary's wild-eyed mania filtered hazily through his brain. You weren't supposed to sleep with wild animals. There was no telling what Gary would do to Jimmy in his sleep, if the mood took him. Jimmy knew about Gary's insomnia from his nights prowling Happy Volts. As he drifted back to sleep, he wondered if Gary'd known all along when he was there, keeping him silent company.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gary begins to understand the cost of falling in love as more fighting erupts. Petey takes a much needed closer look at the situation.

**GARY**

 

Gary remembered the way the morning sun had filtered through the tall square window panes in the sitting room of his first therapist’s office. It was only the residue of a memory, a stain on a stain on a stain from very long ago, but it returned to him often when he wasn’t expecting it. It filtered up through his doze now, to take up residence at the front of his mind with a misty haze. In the dream, his legs bounced in his chair, like they always did whenever his parents forced him to sit quietly for too long. Too much energy and never enough attention. Gary had been a lonely little boy, by all accounts. He had been waiting unattended on an early appointment.   
  
The cloth of the upholstered red seat he sat in was rough against the inside of Gary’s sweaty palms. His hands had always been busy back then, small flies buzzing around in aggravated curiosity. They fiddled now, pushing, smoothing, pinching. They rolled the cloth into fuzzy beads as he clenched the edges by his knees. His legs swung frenetically in time with his rapid heartbeat, something like a hummingbird caught inside the cage of his ribs. He picked string from the upholstery binding.   
  
 Bright, hot light poured in through the dusty panes, filling the quiet sitting room, and obscuring his vision with a soft white blur that he felt more than actually recalled. One of the windows by the door to the hall hung cracked a few inches, open to the summer morning air. In the distance came the perpetual drone of cicadas calling out to one another, and the gentle far away tinkle of wind chimes placed for aesthetic calmness by the entrance to the office. It drifted, sultry and far away, in and out on the hot breeze. He heard the sounds, his small hands traveling in nervous taps up the sides of his legs to clutch at the arm rests, to wrack through his hair, to rise to his mouth where he popped an anxious thumb past his lips and chewed on the skin around his cuticle until it bled. He thought, with a bitter anxious trill, that he would be here forever. That was alone.   
  
Or was he? Gary swallowed a few drops of blood, ran nervous fingers over his thumb, clutched his thumb in his lap. His shoes couldn’t yet reach the ground, and his eyes tracked down past his knees to look at the shoelaces he kept so immaculately tied off into perfect twin knots.  And then his eyes skated across the rug to another pair of shoes. Had he really remembered those? Or did he only think he did? Black, flat shoes, with mismatched bunny ears, one haphazardly tied badly enough to trail one lace carelessly on the ground.  
  
 Another boy sat on the other side of the room looking glumly down at his fists.  He had all the rawness of a piglet, too ruddy and pink to look normal, but something else about him was too blunt and round to be anything other than average. A pert-nosed, pudgy little redhead in a dirty soccer jersey, his knees a mess of scrapes and mud and half-filthy bandaids. Gary’s nostrils flared, interest and skepticism mingling. The other little boy looked up with a prideful glare, and they listened to the hum of the cicadas together. They were regarding each other suspiciously in the quiet of the hot room when the door to the interior office sung open on a chime. The sound meshed with the outside noises of summer, with cicadas and with the hum of the hot sun, and then it was another sound, harsher, louder. The light grew brighter, then impossibly white. And then it was the buzz of a school bell, signaling the end of class.   
  
Gary cracked his eyes open and rushed back into the world, quietly reentering waking life as the classroom around him filled with bustling bodies. Hastily, students were shuffling past screaming chairs and desks to pack up their bags. Had he been… asleep, just now? _Cat napping_? He had dozed off in the latter half of English class, and for half a second he couldn’t shake off the cloud of the dream, sleep lingering still too close to him even as the school bell signaled a call to action.   
  
Smith yawned once, his jaw stretching wide with a crack. The gesture returned circulation to his face and he sat up with a snap to gather his things. Across the room, Beatrice Trudeau was glaring at him disdainfully.  Gary’s eyes ghosted over to her, and took in the agitated way she was stacking her pile of notebooks. Her composition notebook became legible as she clutched the entire pile jerkily to her chest;  _~Mrs. Beatrice Hopkins~._ Gary snorted. His face must have grown mocking because the snide looks Beatrice had been previously shooting him became repulsed ones. It was hard to tell if she disliked  Gary more for being a bully, or, for his apparent ability to nap straight through a lecture. Gary returned her pinched look with a sleepy, sinister grin, and she flushed pink and rushed from the room.   
  
With a lazy swipe, Gary shoveled his textbook into his bag and rose. He generally didn’t make it a habit to sleep in class. Not particularly because he thought he was missing out on something educational, but because it had previously reflected badly on his reputation as Head Boy. However, considering the mitigating circumstances of now being well-hated by all the teachers and possibly all the student body as well, he figured just being really tired was as admissible as any other excuse.  Even the Great and Powerful Gary Smith could only take so many hours consecutively of being awake without a crash, and he hadn’t slept most likely now counting in the 48 hour range. Because, he had been, well?  _Otherwise occupied_.   
  
Last night. _Right_.   
  
Gary’s grin subsided, but didn’t entirely vanish, choosing instead to linger suspiciously in the corners of his mouth as he exited the classroom at the back end of the rush for the door. A sort of smug balloon was swelling up in him now, as he returned to an alert, awake state. He didn’t sleep long even on average nights, but what happened at the lighthouse had tipped him over what he felt was, quite possibly, the best breaking point of his life. He had simply been too excited and overstimulated to allow his brain to ease down. Even after Jimmy had pitched face first into a spit-stained and blissed-out coma, Gary had been unable to keep still. He had dressed quietly to the sounds of Jimmy’s gurgling snores and let himself outside, where he paced along the beach into the salty wind of the cool night. The sun rose a few hours later to greet him still hurling driftwood into the tides, and punctuating the call of sea birds with the occasional mystified bark of laughter.   
  
He had won.   
  
He had _finally_ … _won something_.  
  
At least, that was the feeling Gary had now. He felt unmistakably shocked and pleased, in turns. It followed him down the hall now, banishing all negative thoughts and flooding Gary’s body with happy adrenaline.  He barely even noticed the nervous looks he was receiving as students skated wide around him. (Like they had never seen him smile before. He USED TO smile all the time, hadn’t he?) But of course, they had no way of knowing. They saw a smiling Gary, but they really had no clue exactly how fat the mouse in his jaws actually was. Gary was experiencing apoplexies of delight. He was the destitute bum who had just won the lottery. He was the death row inmate who had just been handed a key to the city. Something about persevering throughout this entire perverse debacle with Hopkins had illogically paid off, and now Gary was reaping all the unexpected rewards. Of course, there were a number of other benefits from carrying on with their arrangement, but one primarily placed itself in the front and center. Jimmy Hopkins was once again _listening to Gary._        
  
It was weird how good it had felt to tell James to do something and instead of receiving a surly silent glare, Gary got an eye roll and a grin. Gary giggled airily to himself as he floated down the hallway to join the queue at the stairs. Having the surety of being _Correct All The Time About Everything_ didn’t mean Gary wasn’t irritated still when a peon below him would second guess his plans. But it was… _nice_ … really, exceptionally, strangely nice, to have his statements met for once with simple, honest enthusiasm. James hadn’t laughed at all that night, until the exact moment he couldn’t stop laughing. That was the way of so many things, Gary had thought ponderously. There was a giddy camaraderie in the awkwardness of not immediately separating from one another after shooting off a few. Jimmy’s cum was still drying on the plank wood floor when the impossible had happened and the tension broke, clean and complete and for the very first time. Smith recalled with awe the simple fun of starting a casual fistfight, remembered how pleasurably his breath strained in his lungs as he sat flung back hard on the ground from a punch, and grinning like an idiot through his labored breathing. Something about the taste of blood and cum together had clearly rattled his senses on a fundamental level.   
  
“-Are you okay?”   
  
Gary’s contented cat grin snapped closed as he simultaneously jerked his head out of the clouds to look back over his shoulder. Surprisingly, the origin of the question was….?  
  
No. It was _Peter Kowalski.  
_  
Gary’s step stumbled over itself until he stopped in genuine surprise. He hadn’t expected this. He _had_ expected little Petey to dig a burrow under a couch and hibernate there until Gary graduated, if anything about their previous interaction was anything to go on. The abruptness of his appearance brought on another jolt of strange satisfaction in Gary’s guts. Jimmy was back, but… no, it couldn’t be. _Was Petey too_?   
  
“…You think I’m not okay usually?” Smith’s blank face twitched into a cautious grin again, his fingers tightening around his bag strap.   
  
  With the student body rushing around him like waves around a rock, Peter looked small. He had always been small, but his appearance was doubly so right now for some reason. Maybe it had something to do with the way his eyes kept skating the ground… or the way the tips of his shoes pointed ever so slightly towards one another. When he looked up, he had a concerned expression bordering on nauseous, as if he were considering a terminal illness or a mutilated animal.   
  
  
“ I just… I just, _saw_ you just now and thought that you… that you looked _really happy_.”   
  
The sentiment suggested Petey was expecting impending plague. He looked hollow and pale, as if he’d seen a ghost.  Gary took it all in, his eyes skating over the shorter boy’s still-healing busted chin, and abruptly laughed.   
  
“So _what_? You _jealous_ , little Petey? You want me to make you _feel_ better or something? _Why_ is _everybody_ _asking_ me to _do_ that lately?” Gary took a step forward, and to his credit Peter didn’t back away. “Come on, little baby, don’t be such a _sourpuss_ all the time. You aren’t _still mad_ I gave you that _teensy_ little shove, are you? The sun is _shining_! The birds are _singing_! _What_ could be _wrong_?”    
  
Petey’s eyebrows furrowed up and together as he looked with real question and concern at Gary’s glowing face. It was a face that stated emphatically _Everything Is Always Wrong All The Time._  
  
Gary waited a beat then clicked his tongue with a sharp grin. “You worried I’ve got something brewing? You wanna _join the gang again_ , bunny? Maybe if you quit being such a little _bitch_ , people would ask you to _hang out_ more often. Or do you and Olsen just _compare_ your _high heels_ in the ball shed after midnight?”   
  
Kowalski’s look of concern morphed into an expression of pleading, and Gary finally threw up his hands with an exaggerated groan. 

 

“Alright, _alright_! You can hang out with me!”

The mousy Head Boy ducked his face, hiding a twitch of the mouth scarily close to a shy smile. It instantly fueled the return of Gary’s confident grin, arriving in full force. He brought his arms back down again, one roping out to sling around Petey’s neck. The shorter boy squawked, but oddly didn’t try to escape.

Maybe everything WAS returning to normal, Smith considered this ponderously as he looked at his friend. Maybe blowing his load on Jimmy’s face was just the release Gary had been searching for all along, and that it maybe was the catalyst for change that would return all the rest of the world back to a state of balance. A world where James asked questions and Gary told him why his questions were stupid and Petey giggled shyly from the couch in the corner. The world that _should have been_.

“Here, is _this_ _better_?” Gary questioned with mock disdain about the physical contact, usually loathsome with normal people and yet comforting somehow now.  “What’s wrong, you want a _kiss_ or something? _Who_ pooped on your parade? Why are yo-”

“-You ARE okay though, right?”  Petey interrupted suddenly, a hint of sincerity painting his pained inquiry with kindness unseen by any Smith for a very long time. Smith temporarily paused in silence, his arm immobile around Kowalski’s shoulder. Did he really want to know the answer to that question?

His mouth opened and began to form a reply when Gary was cut off mid-sentiment by the shitty school PA system.  
 _  
*skreeeeereeeee!*_

_‘MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, STUDENTS! DUE TO THE PIGEON INFESTATION IN THE SCHOOL GYM, ALL SCHOOL ASSEMBLIES WILL FURTHERMORE BE HELD ON THE FOOTBALL FIELD. WHOEVER VANDALIZED THE UPSTAIRS TROPHY CASE WITH INAPPROPRIATE ADULT DEPICTIONS OF MALE GENITALIA, PLEASE REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO THE SCHOOL GYM FOR POOP CLEANING DUTY! ALL OTHER STUDENTS PLEASE PROCEED TO THE FOOTBALL FIELD FOR PROM COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS. ALL 3 OCLOCK AFTERNOON CLASSES HAVE BEEN CANCELLED! AGAIN, ALL STUDENTS! PLEASE PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE FOOTBALL FIELD! ---  ---OH, HEADMASTER, ARE YOU READY FOR YOUR RASBERRY SEED CALF MASSAGE? I PREPARED IT FRESH MYSELF THIS MORNING JUST THE WAY YOU LIKE IT! I, WHAT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN? DID I TURN WHAT OFF? WHAT? OH GOOD LORD, IS THIS THING STILL ON? HOW DO I—?”_   the signal cut with an abrupt electrical zap.

There was a smattering of laughter from the students in the hall, who all began moving in trickling sameness down the master stairs. Gary kept Peter locked to his side briefly, chewing on the novel concept of Prom, when Jimmy appeared in a red blur further down at the end of the hall. Both he and Peter saw him at the same time, if the twitch from under his arm was anything to go on. Hopkins was backing up with a triumphant laugh from a trashcan currently stuffed with nerd, and he dusted his hands off in a self-satisfied fashion that suggested justice had been administered and someone was going to be digging garbage out of their asscrack for days.

For the first time, the sight of Jimmy Hopkins left Gary feeling giddy. His smile broadened, perhaps a little farther than it might usually, knowing the violence Hopkins had casually just committed as if it were an aperitif meant just to wet Gary’s appetite. His first impulse was to drag Petey by the neck down the hall and show him to James, to wave the little pink bastard in his face and say _‘Look who came back to me this time, you pugilistic Cro-Magnon? Just look!’_ In fact, he was gearing up to do exactly that when another orange blur elbowed roughly past them and left Petey twisting to skate out of the way.

With a jolt, all at once Gary understood that he was looking at HER.

The one Jimmy liked. The tall one, with the long legs and the rack that hung unholstered like overripe melons. She had been expelled before, but granted free tuition for a year after the scandals with Mr. Burton had finally come to light. Gary instantly soured at the sight of her, wondering pointedly when the last time he had actually seen her on campus had been. Her free education apparently did nothing to induce her to actually regularly attend classes. James saw her first, and his face lit up in a way that instantly produced in Gary a desire to fling Petey over the second floor railing. Instead, the pink bunny ensconced beneath his armpit finally struggled forward, raising his free hand in the air to also hail Jimmy down.

“Hey! Jimmy! _Hey_!”  

 

 

**JIMMY**

  

For the first time he could remember, Jimmy had overslept. So when he pedaled to campus that morning, his pumping legs rousing the rest of his body from torpor, he already had a nice head start on skipping first period. He'd coasted through the gates of Bullworth and made for the library, making sure to leave generous room between his path and the nearest prefect. Once inside, he'd been bored enough to play a game of Grottos and Gremlins with some other cutters, ending in a rousing argument over the rules (namely, official rules versus the Hopkins modified). The result was a miniature orc tossed in his face, and him chasing Algie across campus and eventually stuffing him into the nearest forgiving trash can. 

 

"Jimmy, there's _trash juice in here,"_ Algernon's muffled voice whined from the grimy depths.

 

"Good!" Jimmy barked, and rattled the rim of the can, causing more muffled squeaks. "Maybe next time you'll give me _advantage_ when I _say_ I get _advantage_."

 

"Pathetic," came a muttered voice from somewhere over his shoulder. He wheeled, ready to bust the naysayer's head—until he saw that it was _Zoe_ regarding him with cold disdain.

 

Jimmy's features lit up when he saw her, but he found his brain void of interesting things to say. He sincerely hoped she hadn't understood that shameful bit of nerd lingo and gleaned the genesis of this argument. Seeing her here at school for the first time in _a while_ , so thoroughly out of her adjacent world and within _his..._ Everything he'd been wanting to tell her, about how sorry he was, about _not being there_ , the words were millions of miles away. They seemed to belong to another lifetime. So instead he pointed dumbly at the top of Algernon's fat, curly head and grinned hopefully, like a dog showing off a mutilated squirrel.

 

"Hey Zoe, look!"

 

"Like I said. Pathetic."

 

Her arms were folded defensively across her chest. He could feel his face falling, and he searched her eyes but nothing softened there. Usually she was all about senseless violence... as long as she was on the controlling side. And she was on Jimmy's side, so she was... wasn't she? _Was she still on his side?_

 

Finally she broke the stare, her eyes traveling briefly over him before she stepped forward. As she closed the gap between them, Jimmy felt his heart beat towards her... Her eyes were lowered almost shyly as one perfect, delicate, trailer-trash hand extended toward him. He could smell her, for the first time in weeks, and she smelled like cheap soap and cigarettes and fingernail polish remover. Like comfort, like  _home_. Was this... forgiveness? 

 

Her hand wavered for a second against his chest, then yanked savagely at the drawstring of his hoodie, closing it tighter around his thick neck. He emitted a wet and undignified choking sound.

 

"Fixed it for you," she said in a mock cheery tone, and smiled at him for the first time—a strangely brittle smile.

  
"She's a biter, I see," she said, under her breath. And with that she elbowed past him and stomped down the hall.

 

One hand shot up to his neck to double cover the place on his collar bone he _thought_ he'd covered sufficiently. God, was it bruising that bad? _THANKS GARY,_ Jimmy wanted to scream. At some point during their half-drunk grapple last night, Gary's bite had switched from Kill to Stun, which had worked with _remarkable efficiency_ but left disturbing visual evidence. The bruising flesh burned through the cloth beneath his hand, and the memory of Gary's teeth and tongue mingled disturbingly with the image of Zoe's swiftly retreating back. 

 

"Hey, Jimmy!" he heard another faint, familiar voice calling to him from behind him, down the hall. _Petey_? Was it Christmas already? Were all his ghosts back to haunt him at once? 

 

Apparently so, because as he turned to acknowledge Pete Kowalski he saw none other than Gary Smith draped around him like a particularly sadistic scarf.

 

Jimmy froze, his body quite still although his blood was pumping more vigorously than ever at the sight of Gary in the daylight. Last night seemed so far removed... and yet so dangerously near. At the same time as he remembered Gary's hair pulled tight between his fingers, he remembered his promises to destroy Jimmy during "off" hours, feverish threats whispered as Jimmy's thick fist brought them both off together for the second time that night. 

 

He wondered for the first time how Peter Kowalski fell into that plan. 

 

He adjusted the neckline of his hoodie again before cautiously approaching the pair, poor Algie left forgotten and quivering in the waste basket.

 

"Hey Pete... _Gary_..." he said, pronouncing Gary's name with a hint of threat. He didn't like the way his arm was looped around Pete's neck like a noose. 

 

"What's up?" he asked Pete, meaning " _You ok?"_ After all, Pete had been avoiding him lately. Maybe he was forced to reach out to Jimmy now as a cry for help. While Jimmy didn't love the idea of being ignored until he was useful, he also would never abandon Pete to the wolves... specifically one wolf in particular.

 

 

**GARY**

 

  

Petey cracked a genuine smile as Jimmy approached, despite the tightening vice of Gary's arm around his neck. "Hey Jimmy! I'm fine, we were just going down to the football field to-"

 

"-Tell me, Jimmy-boy, do you have to borrow a footstool every time you need to get up _high enough_ to kiss her?" Gary unabashedly cut across Petey, his eyes flickering back and forth now between Jimmy's neck and Zoe's retreating figure. The cutting question hung incredibly false and ponderous, a clearly implied lie. He didn't even bother with the formalities of a proper greeting.

 

"Or...? Do you just have to wait for her to bend _really, really low down_?" 

Gary stood casually weighted on his left foot, while the crook of his right elbow circled, python-like, around Petey's head. Was he feeling more incensed or amused right now? The feelings did battle behind his glassy grin, giving him a dangerous edge. Gary had _thought_ observing Jimmy's glowing face directed towards Zoe was bad. But as bad as that was, seeing his face crumple at her rejection was much, much worse. Gary _should have_ been delighted by that shutdown. He _should have_ been overcome by righteous laughter at the way _his actions_ had personally repelled that girl back down the hall like a shot. From the fumbling way Jimmy had slapped his salami fingers down on that particular part of his neck, the part Gary _distinctly recalled_ digging his teeth into, she had seen a bruise. Handiwork that in the moment Gary paused to congratulate himself for. But the rejection didn't quite feel like a victory. Gary's face noticeably tilted to the side as he stared Jimmy down, thinking fast and hard. It wasn't the spurn that was the problem. It was Jimmy's pain at his rejection.

 

Did Hopkins _honestly give a shit_ about what that girl thought? Enough to look crestfallen at her easy dismissal of him? That was stupid, even for James. More than anything, it was Jimmy's obvious dependence on her that felt intolerable.

 

Or..? was Gary... _maybe_...  reading too deeply into it? ...No. He wasn't. The conclusion came almost immediately. His eyes tracked down the hall after Zoe's body, knowing that she was already gone, and knowing that he would need to do some additional work, _soon_ , in order to keep it that way.

 

Beneath the progressively heavier and stronger arm wrapped around his neck, Petey laughed nervously at the tension. Gary had been jovial until just a minute ago, and his only perceptible trigger for change was Jimmy's sudden presence. The shortest boy struggled beneath Gary's grip, tried to throw it off, but ultimately failed when he realized the more he wiggled the harder Gary squeezed. Accepting his place in the jaws of a vice clamp, he attempted again to alleviate the odd ripple of anxiety jolting back and forth between his only two friends, awkwardly reunited again all at once for the very first time since last year's disasters.

 

"We were, uh, just going to the football field, Jimmy. You heard the announcement, right? Should we go... now? Together?" Nobody moved, though the tense silence did ratchet up a notch.

 

  "So? Uh... Prom, huh? Who are you guys gonna go with? I mean, heh ....Girls, am I right?"

 

"I think I know who _Jimmy_ wants to go with." Gary followed up in a tone that falsely advertised amusement. He hadn't yet stopped trying to burn a hole in Jimmy's face with is stare.

 

Petey was just beginning to feel a very distinct fear at Gary's total body stillness when another voice cut over them, and for the first time possibly ever, the Head Boy sighed with relief at the sound.

 

"Smith! Kowalski! Get the lead out! Move along!" A prefect barked, walking with intention in his step from a distance up the hall.

 

"Come on, let's just go!" This time Petey's voice held a note of imploring.

 

"Hopkins, what do you think you're doing there?" The prefect marched closer.

 

Gary eyed his rival with progressively more intensity, feeling a hot jolt in his guts as he recalled Jimmy's thick fists dragging his face forward in the dark. He recalled the horrible, obscene squish of cum passing back and forth between their tongues, and thinking how it would have been better for both of them if he had just locked James in a dumpster in the tenements the day they had first met.

 

"Hopkins! Are you deaf? This is the third time this week you've violated your proximity warning! Go to Crabblesnitch's office! Smith, get marching!"

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

The prefect's warnings fell on deaf ears. Jimmy's face was inches from Gary's now, the rest of the world (poor Petey included) forgotten beneath the static of violence pulsing through Jimmy's brain. 

 

Rather than eliciting feelings of affection or intimacy—like,  _normal stuff_ one might expect to feel after a _teenage_ _sex marathon_ —Gary's presence this morning was just heightening his naturally overstimulated sense of aggression. Not that that wasn't what Gary was _obviously going for_ , eliding any semblance of a normal greeting and going straight for Jimmy's jugular i.e. Zoe. Why did Gary always have to push Jimmy's fucking buttons? And why was Jimmy starting to _like it so much?_

 

"What's the matter, Gary?" Jimmy said, tilting his head in mocking concern. 

 

"You seem grouchy today. Trouble sleeping or something?"

 

He grinned cruelly at the light, almost imperceptible flush that crept over Gary's still hatred-filled face. It only bothered him a little bit, feeling his own face begin to flush with sympathetic desire. He saw Gary begin to formulate some cutting response, but he was cut off by a shout in their ears. 

 

"Hopkins! NOW!"

 

The prefect's warning finally pierced through the haze of impending violence. Jimmy felt a rough, fat hand come down hard on his shoulder, and both boys turned on the intruder simultaneously, fixing him with twin looks of rage that actually startled the prefect back a few ignominious steps.

 

The intrusion broke the tension, however, and Jimmy found he couldn't look at Gary again. He turned to Petey's awkwardly upturned face from where it was smushed against Gary's armpit.

 

"I'll catch up with you later, Pete," Jimmy said, semi-apologetically. Pete waved sadly. Maybe. It was difficult to make out an exact expression from this angle.

 

The prefect was gathering himself and closing back in, but that didn't stop Jimmy from roughly shoulder-checking Gary as he moved past. Jimmy did his best with the insults, but he was nothing if not a physical creature, and secretly he couldn't resist not touching Gary given the chance. Jostling him. A reminder, or a promise. 

 

"Yeah, yeah, I'm going, I'm going," he complained, waving off the prefect. Incensed and embarrassed, the prefect made a lunge for Jimmy's throat which the redhead sidestepped with ease before jogging off down the hall toward the principal's office.

 

Normally, Jimmy would avoid Crabblesnitch like the plague, and he still had to suppress the urge to climb into the nearest locker and thus avoid or delay the whole encounter. But Jimmy was emboldened, bolstered by the night before. And he felt like he was owed some explanation.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Why the hell am I the one in trouble? He started it!"

 

Crabblesnitch sighed and folded his fingers together from his place at his desk while Jimmy wore angry tracks in the carpet. The door to the rest of the office was shut, so at least they had some privacy. Jimmy never loved interactions with the Crab, but things had gotten a lot better after he took care of Gary last year. It was amazing how quickly the man's attitude toward him could switch from berating to sycophantic according to Jimmy's usefulness in his life. Now his tone was neither, but somewhere between, like he was speaking to a very small, very stupid child. 

 

"Because, Hopkins, your daddy isn't contributing 15% of the school's endowment this year. Although... I suppose he's _your_ daddy too, now." 

 

Jimmy stopped in his place from where he was wearing angry tracks in the carpet. Any mention of his stepfather set his teeth on edge, and his fingers moved unconsciously to rub at the callouses on his knuckles.

 

"This is bullshit, and you know it," Jimmy snarled, then pointed an accusatory finger at the ceiling.  

 

"Does nobody at this _stinking school_ remember what happened a year ago? You weren't too concerned about a proximity warning when I proximated Gary through that skylight a year ago and saved your ass from that sociopath!"

 

"Things change," Crabblesnitch barked, shooting to his feet and leveling Jimmy with a menacing glare. "Money is tight and my hands are tied. The renovations to the pool house, employee... bonuses... Anyway, I don't have to explain myself to you. You've helped out in the past and for that we're all very grateful, but you're still a delinquent, Hopkins, if occasionally a convenient one. We _all_ know what happened at the wedding. You're lucky you weren't sent to juvenile detention or _worse_."

 

Jimmy glared at the floor, his guts writhing with a mixture of anger and shame. The look in his mother's eyes as he exited the church flashed in his mind as Crabblesnitch slowly sat back down and began rifling through his papers. 

 

"Now. If I hear about one hair on Gary's head being out of place, and it can be tied back to you by any stretch of the imagination, both of your parents are getting a very long, very _detailed_ letter. And then you can take it up with Mr. Smith. I _doubt_ he will be as forgiving as I have been."

 

He glanced at Jimmy one more time from over the top of his papers. 

 

"And wear some appropriate clothing, for Christ's sake. This isn't a back alley hip hop exhibition."

 

Jimmy frowned down at his outfit—a hoodie and jeans—and mouthed the words "hip hop exhibition" to himself in incredulity.

 

"What was that?"

 

"I said, 'Yes, sir.'"

 

 

**PETEY**

 

 

 

Petey laid the photos out in a tidy line across the linen of his bedspread.

 

Disposable cameras had been en vogue in 1991, the year Gary and Petey had shared their 8th birthday party. The pictures were old now, thumb-stained and dog eared from overhandling, but there was still a certain charm about them that made Pete smile a little, quietly to himself. It had been an awkward year. A year of school bus brawls and sexual awakening and essays written in a chunky graphite scribble. But it had also been the year Petey liked to remember most fondly as his happiest from early childhood. It had been the year he and Gary had truly, actually been best friends. 

 

Reaching out with careful fingers, Pete plucked one of the photos off of his dormitory bed. He brought the slick paper close to his face, squinting out the details in the background. It had been a disaster of a birthday party. Hardly any of the guests had shown up, and the ones that did had all rolled their eyes and groaned and eaten cake in grumbling submission as they waited for their parents to collect them again. Nobody had really liked either Peter Kowalski or his suspiciously aggressive friend with the penchant for laughing too loud. But in Old Bullworth, you didn't snub another rich Vale family unless you were prepared to go to war. It had always been a delicate dance between wasps. Who to sting and who to pollinate had never been mutually exclusive.

 

The photo was a funny one. They had camped out in the back yard in tents, and in the picture Petey stood covered in dirt with a fat calico cat hanging limply from his arms. Gary stood a little ways behind him, taller, and already beginning to grow angular. Though the glint in Gary's eye as he fiddled with a fishing rod suggested the eviler hunting machinations he would one day expertly cultivate, he had been something  close to _almost_ normal back then. A bully, sure. Always a bully. Cunning and fast and sometimes too vindictive for his age. But Gary had always, at least back then, picked Petey up out of the dirt after shoving him down a few times. He had always come back later to offer Pete a strange bug, or to ruffle his hair a little too roughly. As single children, Petey had often wondered if Gary was the closest thing he would ever experience to having a brother. It was a thought that soured over the years, later, when it became more overtly obvious just how troubled Gary really was. And it soured to an almost intolerable extent the day he sat unnoticed in the pews of Saint Jude. His two supposed best friends, now _actual_ brothers, had vanished together into the crowd without looking back. 

 

Petey sighed and let the picture fall back down on his bedspread. He looked at them a moment longer... the picture of a young Gord Vendome with a flower tucked behind his ear and cake on his face looking scandalized, the picture of Gary moving fast enough to motion blur the shot as he struck out at the cat with his fishing rod, the austere portrait of the Smiths and the Kowalskis standing uniformly together... Pete lingered a moment longer on the family picture, touching his mother's face, and then Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith had still then been alive, but Petey had always remembered her as being incredibly distant. She had been a woman occupying some other world, never fully present for the moments when her son had run to her to clutch at her shirt, tears stinging his eyes. When she had ignored him, Gary had always come to pinch Petey. To throw him on the ground and laugh.

 

As if he couldn't tolerate the sight of their parents anymore, Pete swept his hand across the bed to scatter the pictures in a huff. He sighed heavily once in the empty room after, and tried to remember what compassion felt like. Being angry with Gary was a perpetual state of existence for Peter Kowalski now. Pete had been angry with him for years, though maybe _'hurt'_ was a more accurate descriptive term. But it hadn't been until their mutual befriending of Jimmy Hopkins that Petey had really seen, for the very first time, what kind of monster really resided in the body of his oldest friend. Petey's new best friend had so thoroughly unseated his old best friend that now, seeing them both together, Pete wondered if it wouldn't be better just to cut them both out of his life. They had clearly started to do the same for him, in realization of each other. _  
_

  
_But_ , Petey paused to sigh again, no man could be an island. He _needed_ friends. Even as head boy, Kowalski's popularity level had only risen marginally. The nerds spoke to him without judgement, though sometimes with awe in his choice of company. Other than that, Pete spent the majority of his time alone. He missed the uncomfortable shuffle of last year. He missed the odd power dynamic with Jimmy, who in so many ways had treated him so similarly to Gary, all those years ago. And, _yes_ , Petey missed Gary most of all. It was stupid, and irrational, and unfair, but he did all the same. He missed feeling like he was part of something bigger, even if that bigger thing was just one of Gary's grandiose plots of operatic chaos. He hadnt yet forgotten Gary's hand pulling him up out of the dirt.

 

And earlier in the hall, Gary had looked _so happy_.... and then, he had looked _so sad_.

 

As if recalling that face was the only impetus needed, Pete turned on his heel to scan the room for his bag. It sat by his desk and he briskly retrieved it, throwing the leather strap hastily over his shoulder. Maybe it was crazy, maybe it was needy, or, ultimately, maybe it was justified, but Peter wanted to find Gary. Nobody on the planet was more aware than Petey that something major was unfolding in the mind of his tortured friend. Gary had always been unstable, but something about him now was point blank fundamentally wrong. The least Petey could do would be to give their friendship _one_ last stab.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Gary sat on the second floor of the library, folded in an armchair and lost deep in thought. From a distance, Petey saw him as an extension of a shadow cast by a bookshelf, the edges of his sharp jawline lit from one side by the weak golden lamplight of below. His arms were folded high across his chest and he sat half slumped down, his legs kicked up on a chess board. His folded ankles barely kissed the row meant for the black king and queen as he stared ahead into the void, a perturbed expression on his face of someone chewing on a problem they cant quite solve. Petey approached him hesitantly, making sure to make enough noise to announce his presence.

 

As Petey sunk slowly into the armchair opposite Gary, Smith blinked a few times and sat up a little bit, as if rising rapidly up from deep within. He coughed once, and ran a hand across his numb face to summon it back to life. More blinking, then the steady settle of his gaze on the other boy. Petey blanched a shade, but stayed firmly planted in his seat. For long moments neither one said anything.

 

"...Is femmeboy lost, or what? Do you _need_ something?"

 

Petey flinched at the cold tone, and let his eyes skate sadly down to Gary's shoes. He seemed to really consider his next words, taking unnecessarily long with them as if once said, they might not as easily be unsaid. When he eventually spoke, it was with a distinctly unusual tone for any Kowalski; a tone that allowed for no refusal.

 

"...what's going on with you and Jimmy?"

 

Gary stared back at him, dumbfounded. A grin cracked the corner of his face as his voice took on a falsely innocuous tone. "...Nothing! Why? ...should there be?"

 

"Ok, well... You know, because, uh, I mean, we've been friends for like, a _really_ long time, and... if you... um, you know... if you wanted to _talk_ , or whatever... "

 

From his armchair, Smith's face grew incredulous through Petey's stuttering support.

 

"Or, like, uh, if you _didn't_ want to talk, that's ok too? But I mean, I'm, uh... I'm here. If, If you wanted. To, you know. Do whatever. Are you even on any of your meds anymore?" 

 

Smith snorted. "Rude! Guh, wanna check my _undies_ for shit stains too, mom? Why do you care?"

 

A sudden blossom of frustration welled up, and with an aggravated shove, Petey swept Gary's feet off the chess board and flopped hard back into his chair. "You know it wouldn't kill you to not be a dick all the time, Gary! I'm just trying to make sure you're ok, but, you're like... _always_ like this! You never even apologized to me for not seeing me at your dad's wedding! That's really messed up, you know?"

 

The unexpected fountain of anger from a Kowalski pulled Gary's grin wider across his face, even as his nostrils flared in a trill of his own piss and vinegar. "You still jealous, baby bunny? You want me to kiss your boo boo and make it all better?"

 

The responding look of hurt and frustration from Petey was leveled at Gary with surprising strength, and after a long minute of dueling glares Smith gave a tiny incredulous huff and for the first time possibly ever, looked away first. His eyes skated the ceiling of the library hopelessly, before returning back to Pete.

 

"....Divalproex." He muttered.

 

Petey nodded, looked down, nodded some more. "That's... treating.... your headaches?"

 

"...Migraines." Gary nodded back. "....and... _mania_."  Smith widened his eyes and wiggled his eyebrows to express the last word, before letting the issue die. Who cared if Pete knew he was still on one measly trial. At least it wasn't 15 pills 3 times a day. It wasn't the hot sting of a needle in his arm and then the woozy loss of time that made him dull and sick afterward.

 

"So are you like, you know... actually okay? Like, is that what the doctors say?"

 

" _I don't know_ , Petey, are _you_ okay? Because you're _not gonna be_ if you keep this up. What are you getting at?"

 

"You've been _totally weird_ about Jimmy ever since the summer!" Petey burst out, leaning forward in his chair. "Are you going to try to hurt him again? I don't get it, Gary, can't you just like... let it go? You're, you guys, you know, you're like, really, actually... _family_ now. Why are you still spazzing out about him? Don't you want a brother? Look, I remember, you know, how, uh.... I know how big and empty your dad's house is. He's never there, your mom is gone, wouldn't it be great if you could just-?"

 

"-You say one more word about Hopkins and I'll punch you so hard you choke on your teeth."

 

A resounding silence reigned as Petey came to a full stop. The old friends stared daggers at each other, until with a finally defeated sigh, Kowalski gave up. He scratched his head, then stood. His bag came up from the floor and he slung it over his shoulder again, imparting the briefest sad glance back at Gary, who was now staring stormily at the chess board.

 

"...You know what, Gary? Fine. Enjoy what being a dick gets you. But for what it's worth, I hope you're okay. And I hope you see how weird this all is. You? And Jimmy? Are you friends? Or, not? I don't get it. And, uh... honestly?... I really _don't want to_. The only thing worse than trying to kill each other would be if, you, like...I don't know, wanted to kiss each other or something. It's too weird. Have fun being alone."

 

With that, Petey stalked away, Gary's now honestly incredulous gaze following him down the railing until he vanished past the stairs.

  

 

It was only when Kowalski was shoving through the double front doors that he felt an arm sling around his shoulder. His heart jumped into his throat at the familiar contact, but when he looked at his captor a different kind of shock jolted through him. It was Gord Vendome. And he was _smiling_.

 

"Listen, chap, I couldn't help _overhearing_ a little pinch of your... hmm, _interactions_ with that Smith fellow just now, and, well, I've got a bit of a _problem_." He leaned conspiratorially close, prompting Petey to lean back in discomfort. "I've got this blasted paper I need written, _tonight_ , but the Bullworth Aquaberry Yachting Association is meeting in an hour for cocktails and weenies and I really _must_ attend. Daddy _insists_. So!" 

 

  
_Why_ was Gord talking to Petey? Maybe the last time they had spoken was actually when Gord had been 8, with cake on his face. Kowalski regarded him now with confusion.

 

"...If _you_ write _my_ little paper, I think _I_ might have a little bit of, ah, _private information_ I may be able to share with you that could... _elucidate_ your _situation_ with Smith. Something, _hmmm_ , about _Hopkins_ as well?"

 

Petey's eyes narrowed as he swept them up and down Gord's shrewd figure. The taller boy grinned a slow, divulging grin.

 

 

"...Have I... ever... _mentioned_ , my awkward little friend,  what a _keen sense of smell_ I have?" 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the first ever PETEY POV!!! whatttt!!!??! It seemed disingenuous not to hear the inner monologues of #3 in the holy trifecta, so here he comes. Head canon here is that Petey and Gary were friends as children, probably because they were both so weird that nobody else wanted to talk to them. Petey still hasnt been able to recover from the loss of his best friend, which he considers having happened at the beginning of high school, when Gary got ~mean~. His inability to understand mental illness doesn't really eclipse his feelings for Gary though, which are intimate. 
> 
> Meanwhile, it very suddenly sinks home for Gary that just because he and James are now doing the do, doesn't mean Jimmy still doesn't have other important people in his life. Cue Gary mocking up a list of potential assassinations while he stews over the situation like some kind of unbelievably petulant baby. :|


	7. Injuries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The situation goes from bad to worse for everyone involved.

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

 

For Jimmy’s 18th birthday, he bought himself a cellphone. It was a cheap one, the cheapest he could find—basically a brick with buttons on it. He couldn’t afford a plan or anything, so he just bought a bunch of phone cards with minutes on them to use when he needed them.

 

At his birthday party, which the Greasers threw for him in the old motel, he got wasted and wrote his number in Sharpie on the arm of anyone stupid enough to come near him. His drinking that night wasn’t entirely celebratory. He was trying not to think about the fact that there were markedly less people there than last year. Gary wasn’t there, obviously—they mostly avoided each other in public, though they were still fucking like rabbits once a week—but neither was Zoe. Even Petey was strangely absent. So Jimmy drank his feelings and tried to sleep with almost everyone who did bother to attend, to limited avail.

 

Gary got ahold of his number anyhow, as it turned out. Jimmy found that out when he saw it written in a gas station bathroom next to the promise of a particularly disturbing sex act. He got a lot of unsettlingly breathy calls from unknown numbers after that one. Not to mention the endless stream of telemarketers, survey givers and Scientologists that mysteriously got hold of his number. Fucking Gary.

 

There was one other person Jimmy gave his number to. On a night of particular vulnerability, he wrote it on a card addressed to his mother and stuck it in the mailbox of the Smith estate. “For emergencies,” it said. “Love, Jimmy.”

 

* * *

 

 

Jimmy’s phone buzzed him awake at 1am. Fucking Gary, he thought. Without opening his eyes he groped for it across his pillow, preparing a nice juicy insult for whoever was on the other end of that call. He was fully ready to shout down a pervert by the time he picked up, but he was cut off by a shrill voice screaming—

 

“Jimmy, he cheated on me!”

 

Jimmy shot up onto his elbows, his insides twisting into a fist at the sound of that voice.

 

“Mom?”

 

“He cheated on me with a Swede! That inbred cocksucker. Some ‘gentleman’ he turned out to be. They were there with me, Jimmy”—she whined, a note of hysteria in her voice—”In the hotel room! Getting hot and heavy while they thought I was asleep after my third Xanax and a nightcap or two. Well, little did THEY know I only had TWO Xanax. I ran out! And none of these Nazi pharmacies will honor my good AMERICAN prescriptions, so—”

 

She was slurring, and ranting—she was definitely at least drunk and probably a little high. Nothing he hadn’t heard before, of course, but she was on the verge of a panic.

“Mom, calm down...” he said, his head thick with sleep. It had almost been a year since he’d heard her voice.

 

“CALM DOWN? YOU WANT ME TO FUCKING CALM DOWN? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW?” she screamed, her voice distorted with rage. Her voice had a light echo, like she was in a bathroom. Jimmy waited, unwilling to fight with her. And then she began to sob.

 

He’d seen her do this before as a kid. Her fierce temper suddenly burst like a boil, and from it oozed grief and pain. It scared him so much when he was little. Much more than the rage, the crying frightened him. The sound bounced around in his head, jostling old memories.

 

“Jimmy,” she moaned, “Jimmy, baby, you gotta come get me. I woke up from the sounds.”

 

He swung his legs off the bed, his vision going momentarily white with anger and revulsion.

 

“I… I made a mistake. I don’t belong here. We don’t belong with people like this. The Smiths,” she spat, and he could hear the venom infused in the name.

 

“You’re all I have, Jimmy. You’re my only boy. You’ve gotta come get Mommy.”

 

“Ma, you’re not making any sense… you want me to come get you? In Europe?”

 

He was on his feet now, pacing in front of his bed, twisting his night shirt in his fist.

 

“Listen, Jimmy…” she said, and her voice was different. It was suddenly wet, claustrophobic, like her mouth was pressed hard against the receiver.

 

“I want you to kill Warren.”

 

Jimmy’s body stopped moving. It was a few moments before she went on. There were still tears in her voice but she sounded slyer, meaner. More like herself.

 

“I saw what you did to him at our wedding. It probably only would have taken a few more minutes to do him in. Oh, my big, strong boy…”

 

“Ma…” he tried to interject, but she went on, oblivious. She was lost in her own fantasy.

 

“You could enlist that little psycho Gary to help you. I’m sure he’d help. He has plenty of reasons to want the old man dead, and if you asked him, well... I know you two are close…” she trailed off, her tone dripping with cruelty.

 

Jimmy’s blood was ice in his veins. What was she… could she know? Would Gary’s father have told her what he saw in that choir closet? Or was it just common knowledge now, had it gotten to her somehow from Bullworth? He tried to think of something, anything to say, but his mind was exploded with terror.

 

He was saved from having to reply by a crashing sound coming across the line. It sounded like a door was being broken in.

 

“Mom?” he shouted, his heart leaping out of his chest in fear. He heard her hurling insults at someone the sound of scuffling, while someone periodically boomed against the door.

 

“Come get me, Jimmy! I forgive you!” she cried, and as Jimmy heard the sound of the door breaking open the line went dead.

 

* * *

 

 

Jimmy took a swig of his forty and stared dumbly at the illuminated windows of the lighthouse. The lake wind caressed his fevered skin as he leaned against the pier railing. Gary was probably already inside waiting for him. Maybe he’d brought a book and was reading it, curled into a hateful little ball. Maybe he was horny and was messing with himself already. Or maybe he was late too, and Jimmy had just left the lights on.

 

But Jimmy’s body was like concrete, and he couldn’t make himself take another step toward their meeting place. He couldn’t face Gary in his state of mind. Jimmy had avoided everyone all day, and most people were too stupid or narcissistic anyway to notice if anything was off about him. But Gary would know. Gary would pick up on it immediately, sniff his misery out of him like a dog can sniff out a bit of bacon in your pocket. And he would pry, and tease, and eventually Jimmy tell him everything, and Gary would ridicule him again about his stupid whore mom and the stupid whore situations she got herself into. And then Jimmy would kill Gary.

 

He didn’t want to kill Gary. Not anymore. Not at all. In a bizarre turn of events that Jimmy still didn’t quite understand, Gary was the last person in the world Jimmy wanted dead. But right now, with twenty-four liquid ounces of malt liquor in his system and hysterical violence churning beneath his skin, he didn’t want to risk seeing him. He wanted to drink, and wallow, and be alone.

 

So Jimmy turned away from the lighthouse, breaking their arrangement for the first time.

 

He wandered off down a side street, away from the school. He didn’t want to risk running into Gary if he was still on his way. It was already pitch dark out, but it was an unseasonably warm night, so there were more people out than usual. Enjoying the weather, going on dates, doing early Christmas shopping for loved ones. Desperate to avoid human interaction, Jimmy veered into the first empty alley he could find. Resting his forehead on the cold brick, he resolved to go back to school the long way.

 

Plodding down an alley, Jimmy tried to reflect on the events of the last twenty-four hours. Of course he hadn’t slept after talking to his mom. He’d tried to call her back, but had gotten the front desk of the hotel where they were staying, somewhere overseas. When his call was transferred to her room, no one picked up. He tried again, and again, with the same outcome, until finally the front desk stopped transferring him, saying that he was bothering their guests and would he please stop calling. He didn’t, of course, until his phone card ran out of minutes.

 

By that time it was about four in the morning, so he’d laid himself down to try to sleep but ended up just staring at the ceiling, wondering if his mom was still alive. He knew she was, of course, but for some reason he couldn’t stop himself from picturing her dead. The image wouldn’t leave him. Her body lying on a strange hotel bed, strangled, her zebra-print nightgown hiked up around her veiny thighs. He thought about Gary’s mom, too. What she must have looked like dead. He didn’t know what she looked like at all, so in the end he just pictured Gary. Gary slumped over at the desk in his museum-like childhood room, a thin trail of vomit sliming onto the floor. Jimmy wasn’t moving but his heart was racing as he lay paralyzed in bed, his thoughts far, far beyond his control, dead faces of Gary and his mother flashing in succession before his eyes. He wondered if it was true—if she had killed herself over Gary’s dad. Or if Gary’s dad had killed her, and made it look like a suicide. He didn’t move until the sun came up.

 

He’d rushed out and bought another phone card as soon as the shops opened, but by then the hotel had blocked his number. He’d skipped first period stewing on what to do. He could rob a bank, maybe. Or go steal some drugs and sell them. His mind wheeled through every B-movie gangster get-rich-quick scheme he could think of, but he couldn’t come up with anything that made sense. After all, by the time he got there they’d probably be gone anyway, Mr. Smith having whisked them off to the next destination in their interminable European tour. Maybe it was all to keep her away from Jimmy, he began to think, anxiety and lack of sleep pumping his veins with paranoia.

 

It had been around one pm when his phone rang again. He almost didn’t catch it in time, hunched and brooding at the very top of the bleachers, but he fumbled it on at the last ring. It was his mother.

 

“James,” came her voice down the line. She sounded tired and irritated.

 

“The hotel told me you’ve called them forty times. The house had better be on fire.”

 

“Mom,” he started, his heart in his throat. “I thought you were—”

 

“I was what? Speak up, Jimmy, is this an emergency or what? What the hell have you been calling for?”

 

Jimmy licked his lips, his eyes wavering back and forth as he tried to think of what to say. She sounded so normal.

 

“Are you okay?” he finally asked, and hated how young and small his voice sounded.

 

She went quiet for a few moments, and there was a rustling sound like she was repositioning the phone. When she spoke again it was in a harsh whisper.

 

“I’m fine, Jimmy. Now you listen here. You forget about what I said last night—whatever you thought you heard. You were half-asleep, and I… I was—I was drunk. I’m not proud of that. And I may of said some things. I didn’t…”

 

She sighed, and the fevered vibration that had gripped Jimmy’s skin for the last twelve hours began to cool.

 

“You stay out of it, you hear me?” she said, and the coolness became colder, and colder, and Jimmy felt his face and body turn to lead as she spoke.

 

“I’ve been finally happy for the first time in my life with Warren. You couldn’t possibly understand that. Gary’s poisoned you against him, and there’s nothing I can do about that. But you stay away from him, you understand? Stay away from us.”

 

There was a long silence as Jimmy waited for her to say something else. Some of the littler kids were playing an impromptu game of touch football on the field. Their laughter drifted up towards him through the cool, clear air.

 

“You’ve been a good boy to me, Jimmy. I know you’re sorry for what happened at the church.”

 

One of the littler kids fell down and bit the dirt. He began to cry, and the other kids rallied around him to see what was wrong. The kid who had pushed him stood off by herself, unsure of what to do.

 

“Christmas is coming soon, and we might be coming home. Warren doesn’t want to see you after what happened at the wedding, understandably, but… I think I may be able to talk some sense into him. You don’t want to hurt him anymore, do you Jimmy.”

 

Some of the kids started yelling at her, and she yelled back, red-faced. She was just playing the game. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. He was too little to be playing with them, that’s all.

 

“So, maybe I’ll see you at Christmas. You’d better get me something nice,” she said, a flirtatious note to her voice. Then she hung up the phone.

 

The little girl ran off the field. Jimmy could see that she was crying, but she didn’t want the other kids to see.

 

* * *

 

 

Jimmy hazily registered a group of boys walking toward him down the alley. They were dressed like typical townie punks, but Jimmy didn’t recognize them. There was a time, not that long ago, when Jimmy probably knew every single person within a 20 mile radius of Bullworth. But those days were gone, and Jimmy hunched down, his fists shoved deep into his jacket pockets.

 

As they passed, Jimmy accidentally bumped into one of the boys as they walked the other way. He kept walking, too empty to care, until dimly he began to register voices approaching from behind.

 

Jimmy looked over his shoulder to see the boys advancing on him. Now that they were close, he could see that they were hyper, and on something, and probably very bored, because they began circling him like a pack of wolves.

 

“Hey faggot, why don’t you watch where you’re walking?”

 

“That was rude--you gonna apologize, squirt?”

 

“Yeah, apologize, you little cocksucker!”

 

“Do you have any idea who you just ran into, cunt?”

 

“You should be on your knees, begging for forgiveness!”

 

Jimmy tried to ignore them. He really, really tried.

 

But when a hand fell hard on his shoulder, he stopped. The other boys fell quiet as Jimmy slowly swiveled his head to look at the hand. It was white, and it had a bandaid on the middle finger, and dirty fingernails, and thick callouses on the fingertips. He turned the rest of the way to look into the face that hand belonged to. He made eye contact and held it for what felt like ages. Up close, Jimmy wondered if he didn’t know this boy after all from somewhere. But it didn’t matter. It was too late.

 

The dam in Jimmy had broken. It had been threatening to since that crystalline chord of misery in his mother’s voice pierced through him from a cellphone speaker, twenty-four hours ago that felt like twenty-four years. Out of the dam poured violence, the likes of which he hadn’t felt since the last time he’d seen Gary’s father, seen the bruises on Gary’s face. Jimmy’s club fists hammered into the boy’s face, stomach, shoulders, over and over again, before coming to settle in a rigor mortis around the boy’s skinny neck.

 

Through the rush of cold hatred, he was only aware of hands. They were all over him. Wrapped around his waist, pulling his forehead back, gripping his forearms and clawing at his wrists. Other hands were fists pummeling him, beating and bruising on his mouth and shoulders in a mortal panic. Chapped hands, dirty hands, fingers with vitiligo and tattoos and hairy moles. Pulling and punching and clawing, trying futilely to pull him off of the other boy.

 

Most clearly he knew his own hands, and the skinny neck between them. The blunt indentation where his fingernails cut in at the windpipe, crushing it. The fluttering of pulse and breath that fought against him like a bird in a steel net. It was no use. His hands were made for this, he knew then, with a strange sense of serenity. His mom was right. Gary was right. Hands like his were made for hurting.

 

And then all the other hands were gone. Jimmy and the boy were the only ones left. Jimmy’s unfocused gaze drifted lazily upward to meet the rolling white eyes of the boy he was killing. They knew each other for a brief, private moment. They said silent goodbyes.

 

And then Jimmy’s hands wouldn’t hold on anymore.

 

The other boy stumbled backward, desperately rasping air in through his throttled pathways, and Jimmy saw for the first time the little knife glinting in his hand. He registered what had happened then, and with realization, feeling slowly began to return. His hands moved down automatically and pressed stupidly at his stomach. He felt the wetness there as his insides struggled outward, pulsing at the jagged edges of his skin.

  
The other boys swarmed around the one with the crushed neck, lifting and dragging him away down an alley. None of them looked at Jimmy as he slumped against a vacant doorstep. He huddled in on himself, around the wound he could still, strangely, barely feel, and rested his head against the splintered door frame. He closed his eyes just as his phone began to ring. 

 

 

**GARY**

 

 

 

Gary stared indignantly at the pay phone.

It wasn’t that he was _above_ using it, Gary assured himself in his own (doubting) mind. Of course he could. The false mantra repeated, even as his hands went nervously to wrap his navy jacket more tightly around his chest. He stared the thing down in the dark of the street, doing his best to put the background noises of distant foot traffic out of his head. No, he could _make the call._ He _knew how_ to make the call, but…. it was just…. It was only that he…. Smith’s glare intensified, even with no one in particular around to see it. He turned briefly to cast a wary eye down both ends of the street, before turning back and stuffing both hands beneath his armpits to warm them. The problem was just that he hadn’t ever thought that he would have to be the one _here_. The one _right here_. He hadn’t ever wanted to be _this guy_ , in this situation, in this moment. Gary Smith did NOT chase people.

That was all there was to it. Gary huffed to himself, disbelieving, disdainful. The sound died in the cold air, falling flat. SMITHS did _not_ chase. They _persuaded_. They did the hiring and the sleuthing, _not_ the pursuing. And yet? Here he was all the same, attempting telekinetic warfare with a piece of public property he wished would explode in a dramatic fire. How many different methods were there to destroy a pay phone anyway? Gary’s eyes narrowed in the dark as he watched the street light catch on the smooth black phone handle, and he tried to gather himself back together. This was getting out of control, and he needed…? Closure? What? Answers, more than anything.

It had _finally_ happened. After never missing a single day, Jimmy dumbfuck Hopkins at long last hadn’t shown up for their regular thursday meeting.

What more was there? He _hadn’t. Come._ The thought existed on a permanent loop, lacing Smith’s fingers with electricity at each insidious circuit. It felt faraway in it’s undeniable truth, like the death of someone you couldn’t quite accept yet. Gary had powered through 45 pages of Dostoyevsky before he had thrown his paperback at the lighthouse wall, breaking pages from binding and raining _Crime And Punishment_ down in a paper snowfall across the dirty hardwood of their secret meeting spot. After, he had gotten up off the repulsive mattress to pace in an angry circle. He lit a fire in the dusty fireplace with the carcass of his book, but it shrank lying unattended fairly quickly. By the time Gary watched the last glowing log crumple apart, he knew there was no hope. He had been dismissed for the night.

It simply couldn’t be. It _couldn’t_ be. Gary’s toe tapped now with anxious energy as he ramped himself up for a confrontation. Logically, there had to be a reason for the slight. What if there were…. extenuating circumstances? Inane justifications rose up as one. There had to be a good reason. It was _theoretically_ possible, right? What if Jimmy was just busy with something unavoidable? _No. He would have shown up late, rather than never,_ the counter argument whispered. What if he had forgotten it was Thursday? _No, James was an idiot, but this was far too important a pipe-clearing ritual for edgy Jimmy Hopkins to let slip by unremembered_. What if he was in detention? God, that excuse was _even stupider_ than all the rest. And yet, Gary posed the question to himself, pointlessly, fruitlessly, vainly, if only just to keep away the dark thought at the very core of him. The one he was suddenly horrified to face.

What if… Jimmy had simply…. changed his mind? About their meetings? About Gary?

About… _everything_?

That particular terror resonated at last, fully surfaced, cold, dead. Smith stared at the pay phone without actually seeing it, and his whole body went still, numb with the concept. It was a heavy block of ice in the bottom of Gary’s stomach, and it’s constant weight made him alternately furious and disbelieving, even as he tried his best to ignore it. Years of pill trials made the teenager instantly question the validity of his reaction. Was he overreacting? Or, _wasn’t_ he? _Was he?_

Questions still lingered.

What about Jimmy’s birthday? Gary had let it slide by without a word. He hadn’t given Jimmy a damn thing, choosing instead to largely ignore it, to cast aside a day a normal person would have taken joy in. Except, that wasn’t quite right either, was it? He HAD given Jimmy something. The gift of cruelty. Prostitutes, telemarketers, weirdo perverts. A number scribbled on a bathroom wall, and maybe a little more than that. But… what else was there? How else did they communicate? Was Jimmy _angry_? After _everything else_ that had happened between them, every act of violence, every vindictive comment, could just _one prank_ be the straw that had finally broken the camel’s back? An unexpected swell of guilt came and went, and Gary’s hands came alive again to chafe his torso in the cold night air, a string of profanities suddenly bursting past his stiff lips to echo off the wet street.

The phone mocked Gary in silence. CALL HIM. CALL HIM AND SOLVE YOUR PROBLEM. CALL. REVEAL YOURSELF. Another swell of agitation ripped through the teenager’s body. He wracked a stiff hand through his hair and turned angrily around, steeling himself to walk away. _Why_ did he need to call James about it? Had a Smith _truly_ become _that pathetic?_ It wasn’t exactly like Hopkins would be un-discoverable at a later date. This town was small enough to completely traverse it on a single bicycle, there were only so many places Jimmy could hide.

 

Gary dragged himself halfway down the block before his own anger got the better of him and he stopped in the middle of the road, stiff and incredulous, cursing himself out again in a cloud of chilly vapor. He cast the sky a disbelieving look, and then he was turning around again on a bitter heel. Stomping the entire way, Gary's stubborn feet brought him back to his original position. He grit his teeth there, rooted to the sidewalk, eyes locked to the pay phone as if chained.

Predictably, this emotional outcome was… unwelcome. Gary certainly could think of better uses for his time than internally screaming over yet another Hopkins slight. Especially at the moment. It was almost funny. Or, it would have been, if it wasn’t so incredibly frustrating. And yet, there it was. _All of it,_ all of Gary’s feelings associated with Hopkins were unwelcome, but something about _this time_ was different. It was poignantly worse than all the other times. It was more personal, because it involved a lack of effort over something concerning only them. It was a broken promise, a secret unwhispered as if it had never been. Jimmy hadn’t come. _Jimmy hadn’t come_. But, he _always_ came. His unshakably regular presence was the unexpected rock in Gary’s life. It wasn’t until tonight that Gary saw that clearly, saw how he had grown to expect in a way he never had before. But the terror of that revelation was for another night. Only knowing that it was _there_ was enough for now. It was the lynchpin that held all the rest together, and if Jimmy Hopkins was out there fucking around somewhere without a _completely legitimate excuse_ , then so help him, Gary would figure out a way to wedgie Hopkins in a pair of boxers that had been lit _on fire_ to within an inch of his _stupid life._ Did he think this was a joke?!

In a fit of particularly undeniable indignity, Gary finally grabbed the phone off the mount, and tried not to dwell as he angrily punched in Jimmy’s number. His heart hammered in his throat as the line buzzed. A good ten minutes of yelling would pipe off some of this frustration, right? Did Hopkins think their date was something he could this easily discard? Did he think Gary would just go about the rest of his night without a pause? Without a problem? A healthy thirst for revenge was mounting up as the phone rang, Gary’s arm hairs prickling with electricity, sucking all the moisture out of his mouth. Well, Hopkins would see. Gary would _make him_ see what a fatal error he had made. The other line clicked over and Gary was ready and waiting.

“…J _ames!_ How _generous_ of you to _pick up the phone!_ ” Smith instantly launched into his diatribe, his voice dripping sarcasm like too much honey, despite even the anxiety palpably bleeding over as well.

“Remember _me_? You know, _Gary_? Your _good buddy_? Or, what was that, your BROTHER? Gary? _Gary Smith??_ YES, I DO have your number, and YES it’s predictably _incredibly stupid_ for you to even _own_ a phone in the first place. I mean, come on. Did you think I wouldn’t _find out_? Maybe you don’t _remember me_ , since it’s been _so long since the last time we saw each other,_ but don’t worry, I’ll remind you! Our parents got married? And then I _jerked you off_ in the closet? _Remember_? Then you beat up my _dad_ in a fit of repressed homosexual rage before fleeing the scene of the crime in _ugly_ tears? Oh! Oh, right! AND I’m that person you made a vow to swop _vile bodily fluids_ with once a week? Remember that agreement? You DO know that it’s Thursday tonight, don’t you, Jimmy-boy? So, all I’m saying here is, you better have _one hell_ of an excuse or you’re gonna wish you were dead in the street!”

The line was silent, though Gary could hear the sound of distant barking dogs on the other end.

“Aww, what’s this?…What’s wrong? …Feeling _guilty_ , James?” Gary’s voice lowered an octave, taking a left turn and changing up his tone as he tried not to let the uncharacteristic silence rip a chill through his chest. Why so much quiet? James had a rebuttal for everything, even if it was just a stupid punch from one of his hammy fists. Though, admittedly that was less effective over the phone.

 

“It’s ok, just… _tell me where you are_ , so I can kick your ass. Don’t be a little bitch about it either, ok? You’ve _had it coming_ for a while, I mean even _you_ can see that, can’t you? Why don’t you _just admit it?_ I can’t _believe_ you even had _the balls_ to ditch me in the first place! Just admit you blew me off and we can wrap this up!”

Quiet. Why was Jimmy being so quiet??

“…OK…. _fine_. Look, I _won’t_ kill you,” Gary amended with mounting anxiety, “but you’ve got to admit you’re being a _complete_ turd right now, right? Did you think I wouldn’t _remember_ what _day_ it was?”  
  
More silence. Gary’s irritation mounted.

“James. This _little silent treatment game_ is _cute_ , but I _know_ where you _live_. You can’t hide from me. You picked up the phone, didn’t you? So just _talk_ , moron! Are you even _listening_ to me?”

Silence.

…And then, something else.

A hitched breath. A winded, squeaky sound that made Gary instantly think of a dog after being kicked. His palms instantly slicked with a cold sweat, all other sounds falling away.

No.

Denial resonated, more strongly than ever.

_No._

Nope, nuh-uh, no, not happening. It didn’t compute.

It couldn’t be.

It wasn’t _possible._

Gary breathed in and out, expelling chilly clouds of damp breath against the mouthpiece of the receiver.

Jimmy _couldn’t_ be…. _was_ _he?_

“…Come on, Jimmy-boy… Don’t be so _pathetic_.”

_…Hurt?_

Jimmy’s resounding quiet doubled down on that reality.

How? _Where_? Because primarily, it wasn’t _possible in the first place_. Jimmy Hopkins was _unbreakable_. That was a fundamental rule belonging to their Universe At Large. Hopkins didn’t _do_ ‘hurt’. He was the wall Gary liked to punch again and again because it felt so solid, so reassuring, ever comforting in the reality that the wall could never, ever be moved. If anyone knew this firsthand, it was Gary Smith. Confusion wracked the teenager as he clutched the phone in his sweating palm.

 

“….Jimmy.” Gary heard himself say the name over the line without implication. If anything, the clipped tone betrayed a mounting panic. “….Where are you?”

 

For the space of five heartbeats, Gary pressed his ear hard into the receiver and listened with every inch of his full attention. Sirens came, in the distance. Barking dogs, and trash cans clattering far away as hobos wrestled through the garbage for discarded prescriptions in the chilly night air. And Jimmy was still there too, Gary realized. His breathing was strained, but he was there. Alive, somewhere, definitely in the street, most likely on the ground. But… _where_? A completely unexpected streak of fear ripped through Smith, growing hotter as it went along, as sharp as a knife slides white-hot across the skin. Where was he? _Where was he?_

Panic burned, growing increasingly white-hot. “”You _stupid dog_ , _what the hell did you do_? TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE.”

Long moments passed in a wordless excruciating pause. It was the kind of silence that resonated. The kind of silence that held human breath hostage in the lungs as everything about the world spun out and flipped upside-down in a singular, sickening lurch. And suddenly, a miracle struck.

 

Gary liked to believe that chaos was the natural order of the universe, that nothing mattered other than the road you scraped out of the shitty ether for your own self. That there was no such thing as fate. He had always hated the concept of organized religion, despite his conservative christian upbringing. After all, what had God ever done for Gary? (Other than facilitating the legal binding of himself to a step-family he would give _literally anything_ to forget about.) And yet, as he stood trembling at the cold rectangular metal block of a pay phone in the dark, the boon he was so desperately in need of seemed to come all at once as if a gift from heaven. For the _exceptionally grand_ total of _one time_ in his life, the universe decided to give Gary Smith a singular gift; a cat knocked a trash can over in the distance. Gary heard it once over the phone, and again as an echo down at the end of the street from where he stood. His eyes jerked up just in time to see the cat tear ass across the intersection and into the dark again.

The phone was abandoned before the cat’s claws even left the sidewalk.

Gary ran full tilt down the dark street, his blood pumping hard in his throat. He had been unbelievably angry a minute ago, angrier than he had been in weeks, so incredibly ready to shed blood. To unquestionably commit acts of violence. To Jimmy, _specifically_. A minute ago he had been hungry to make Jimmy hurt, to superficially reenact the night he had tried to throw him off a building. He had wanted Jimmy to suffer, physically OR emotionally, it seemed not to matter which… and yet, as he watched his own feet in a blur beneath him, only one thought resonated now. It cut cleanly through all the rest of the constant noisy static, crystalline in it’s ultimate clarity and purpose.

_Jimmy Hopkins was not allowed to be hurt._

The teenager took the first corner at a slide, whipping around the building and throwing himself into the alley the cat had launched itself from like a comet plunging to earth. Jimmy couldn’t be hurt. He COULDN’T be. Again, the idea echoed: It didn’t _fit in_ with the _rules_ _of their universe._ A piece of glass in the foot, a broken nose, those were amusing annoyances easily set aside. Gary could laugh and think about shoving his thumb into one of Jimmy’s bruises until the other boy squealed like a pig in pain. Maybe there was room still after that for impact damage, for blowing out your back or glass digging scars into the skin or even just a really, really vigorous kicking. But not this. _Whatever this was._ Not the cold silence that precedes loss of consciousness. Not the wheeze of crushed organs, the pathetic strain of someone an inch away from the bottom of a deep and terrible hole. Jimmy Hopkins had something like immortality about him. It was undefinable, but ever present. He was the terrible boulder that c _ould not be budged._ It was part of what made him so fascinating, and ultimately so frustrating. His inability to be crushed was Gary’s primary reason for feeling, well _…. what? Love?_ Attachment? Gary hysterically threw the idea off, completely incapable of containing it at the moment. His throat thudded manically, the pressure of steadily mounting horror jacking up his heart rate and flooding his body with dread. Jimmy simply _didn’t go down._ He was immovable. UN-KILLABLE. And the concept of Jimmy lying on the ground somewhere in vulnerable defeat now left Smith with a feeling he thought he would never, ever, EVER, even in the history of a thousand million years, ever be able to feel.

_Fear_. Fear for Jimmy’s safety.

“You _incredible_ piece of _trash_ , WHERE ARE YOU?”

The words spilled furiously past Gary’s lips and bounced off the brick surrounding him, impossible and disbelieving before he even registered his feet stopping their frantic scramble. And all at once, there he was. The body. ( _The body??_ No, that was _crazy_. It wasn’t _just_ a body.) Down the alley, Jimmy’s silhouette was unmistakable in the dark. Up close, far away, three hundred miles away or three inches away, Gary would always recognize that boulder-like figure. A figure like a pile of rocks that had somehow figured out how to put on human clothing and paraded around incognito among them. He was there. He was _there_. Half hidden, halfway down a door frame. THERE. Relief came briefly at the discovery, then the swell of panic rose again. Jimmy’s slumped visage filled Smith’s vision, filled up his entire world, everything else rolling back as a distant drunken echo of the importance of Jimmy’s shoulders, the red smear across his chin, and the way his sweaty brow pushed bonelessly against the frame he slumped against. Gary was squatting in front of him in less than a heartbeat. Jimmy’s right arm was stained in blood, elbow to wrist, as he shoved it against his stomach. His other hand laid limp on the pavement, his chunky cellphone discarded a few feet away, the line still live with the vacant pay phone down the street.  
  
After the incredible luck of _actually discovering_ Hopkins, Gary squatted in a temporarily confused silence as his own harsh breath dragged in and out in haggard gasps. He swallowed once as he stared at the other boy, swallowed twice, leaning hard on his heels as his mouth hung open. His lungs felt pinched, too tight, his pale face glowing milky white even in the shadows. What…. What was he _supposed to do_ here?

“Hey… HEY!” Gary’s hand went out to swat hard at Jimmy’s thick cheek, attempting to revive his sluggish line of sight. When the slap didn’t merit any significant change, Gary swept the figure up and down with a disgusted look, as if regarding a child who had flunked out of an incredibly simple class. If Jimmy responded to disdain, at least that was a significant marker that he was still somewhat present, mentally.

“Hey, _moron_! _Get it together_! Look at me. Jimmy! Can you even _hear me_?? What the hell happened to you? What _good_ are your _stupid greaser lackeys_ if none of them are ever _actually around_ to keep you from getting your _ass kicked? Huh??_ Wake up! I really hope blowing me off was _worth_ all this, otherwise you’re even stupider than even _I_ thought you were. _Look at me already!”_

What went unsaid, and yet what continued to pulse like a vein of lava concealed beneath Gary Smith’s barely collected facade, was that the teenager was _horrified_. By Jimmy's situation, by how red the blood was, even in the dark. By every emotion he had felt too loudly before, on top of what looking at James right now was pulling violently to the surface. His sarcasm was a mere ornamental lid, a cap on something much greater. So much greater, in fact, that if Gary were really forced to put a name to it, he was currently edging on something closer to complete mental disassociation. He could blink out of this terrible place in a second, if he so chose. He had done it before. He could, _doubtlessly_ , do it again. In the asylum, Gary would be there, and then he would be somewhere completely different. All of it, _everything_ was too much right now. How was he supposed to look at Jimmy's prostrate figure bleeding in some filthy alley and _not_ want to scream? In a snap, he could go somewhere else, walk away even, and leave James in a heap to bleed out alone. But it would be a crime he could never, ever bring himself back from. That terrible anchor kept him grounded. Instead, he found his gaze focusing again on the excessively ordinary curve of Jimmy’s down-turned eyelashes. Like in the shower. Like when Jimmy fell asleep with a dribble of drool sliding past his half-parted lips, bathed in the dusty golden glow of the lighthouse.  He looked at them, and steadied himself. He couldn't leave Jimmy. Even if he wanted to, in an instant Gary knew that he never would. Not when, for the first time in his _entire stupid life_ , he had finally found a friend. 

 

“Jimmy.” Gary’s stiff hand went out to grasp the other boy’s shoulder, fingers digging tensely into the flesh there through layers of cloth. If Jimmy didn’t say two words in the next five seconds, Gary would throw him over one shoulder like a sack of concrete and high tail it to the nearest hospital. Actually, that would probably happen regardless of Jimmy’s word count.

 

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

 

Jimmy wasn't sure if he'd been sleeping for two seconds or two days before he was being shaken awake. It was so _rude._ He'd had such a long, shitty day, and he was finally catching a nap in a doorway like any normal Bullworth citizen when this asshole had to come along and ruin it. Probably one of those little dicks coming back to finish him off for almost obliterating one of their numbers. Well, he'd show _him,_ just as soon as he could move.

 

He was feeling so much _better_ , too. His consciousness had been floating along without worry, buoyed by malt liquor and blood-loss, while a familiar, far-away voice shouted obscenities at him from his discarded phone. Who knew all it took was one burst of thoughtless, self-destructive violence to get his head out of the bad place and back on its well-worn track? He was fine now. Great, even. He was thinking of setting up a permanent thing here, in this doorway. He'd even claimed it already with a nice little pool of blood. 

 

But... that voice. Finally Jimmy cracked open his swollen eyes one at a time to behold the pale, stern face of Gary Smith.

 

Jimmy smiled, flashing blood-coated teeth.

 

Gary was crouched next to him, his hand gripping Jimmy's shoulder in a way that managed to be both tentative and iron-clad at the same time. Jimmy's fat heart swelled at the sight of him, and fueled by alcohol and a rush of gratitude, Jimmy fumbled his hand out to drag him in for a kiss. 

 

He wasn't supposed to _touch_  Gary in public, let alone kiss him. He knew it was stupid, and that Gary would be  _very_ mad, but he was just so fucking happy to see him. He swept his drunken, bloody tongue around the inside of Gary's mouth in affection and gratitude, felt the corner of Gary's mouth pucker in disgust, but was surprised to note that Gary didn't push him off immediately. Gary must have been worried about him or something because he tolerated Jimmy's pawing with uncharacteristic patience and understanding. He was probably just drunk, but Jimmy thought he even felt Gary sigh against him after a moment, pressing him lightly back against the doorframe. 

 

Gary finally shoved Jimmy off of him, though his fingers still dug bruises into Jimmy's already beaten shoulder. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand (like a little kid, thought Jimmy fondly) and spat some of Jimmy's blood out on Jimmy's shoes. Gary seemed to war with himself, grappling his mind into submission, while Jimmy watched him with perfect idiot contentment.

 

Gary had been _worried_ about him. Gary had _come_ for him.

 

On any other night, Jimmy probably would have laid there until dawn. No one would have thought to look for him, or to care. But as it happened, this was the one night of the week when he had a standing sex appointment with his villainous rival step-brother, and against all odds, he'd thought to come looking for him. Jimmy looked at Gary with unadulterated adoration and made a mental note to thank his mom for making him finally lose it on a Thursday.

 

" _James..."_ he said slowly, and Jimmy was so far gone he didn't even mind the use of his given name. Gary's voice was low and dangerous, with an almost inaudible tremor at the edges, but any significance intended or otherwise was lost on Jimmy. 

 

"What the _hell..._ do you think you are doing out here?"

 

It was more of a statement than a question, and Jimmy was glad because he didn't really have an answer. What _was_ he doing out here, anyway? He was supposed to be in the light house, coaxing Gary through his second orgasm by now. He was supposed to be on his knees in front of him, his mouth wet and stretched and ecstatically full. 

 

"I'm sorry," he croaked, and he meant it. He'd broken their arrangement. He owed him an explanation, he knew that, for not showing up and for looking like shit and being so drunk and stabbed. 

 

 

"I fucked up. I feel... I feel like shit, Gary. Can you get me home?"

 

  
_Home._ That wasn't what he'd meant to say, but... in another way, it was. It's just that he realized his definition of home had changed. Home used to mean his unmade dormitory bed, but he found it really didn't fit there anymore. That place was too quiet, too changed. It  _certainly_ wasn't the Smith mansion, or anywhere he'd ever lived with his mom. By home, and he knew by the flush on Gary's neck that he already understood, Jimmy meant the light house. _Their_ light house. The only place he'd felt any sort of constancy, lately. 

 

Gary's eyes narrowed into angry slits at the request, and Jimmy could tell he was about to get shouted at. He cut him off before he could start in.

 

"Please, Gary, I don't want to go to the fuckin' hospital. I'm fine, I swear. I just need—I just need to sleep."

 

Jimmy was already heaving himself to his feet. He had to show Gary he was ok—it was just a small stabbing. He just needed, like, 72 hours of sleep. He started to wobble about halfway up, but Gary was already beneath him, his strong shoulder braced into Jimmy's armpit. Jimmy leaned into him gratefully, happily, bloodily.

 

The two boys limped off down the alley. Gary hadn't responded on whether or not he'd make him go to the hospital yet, seemed to be turning the request over in his mind, but Jimmy ultimately didn't care. He'd go wherever Gary wanted him to. 

 

 

 

**GARY**

 

 

For a while, the only sound that registered between them was the shuffle of sluggish feet dragging over pavement. Gary breathed hard as he dragged the other boy’s semi-comatose body down the street, and tried keenly to focus on the immediacy of the moment. It was so much better to focus _in_ , instead of _out,_   instead of the 500 different directions his own panicked brain might attempt to veer off course, after witnessing the trauma of the situation. After a while, the rhythms of movement began to consume Gary. The drunk stumble of Jimmy’s feet. The heat of Jimmy’s arm across the back of his neck. Their labored gasps, hitched and off-kilter as they struggled onward. Breathe in, breathe out, keep going. For a flurried moment, Gary even lost himself to his past, to the physical memories of being dragged through the snow by the hands of unrelenting orderlies, by the hands of doctors, and the hands of other patients intent on keeping him from climbing the fence in the yard and running as fast as he could into the woods beyond. Sometimes during the day, but sometimes at night too, under a moon like this one. A full, quiet moon under a sheer gauze.  

 

Jimmy moved slowly. Almost excruciatingly so… like a battered boxer left in utter defeat after twelve long rounds, his swelling face hung bowed in pain and effort. He didn’t speak… _That_ was certainly a weird thing to notice. Hopkins without some kind of moronic grievance on his lips was really no Hopkins at all. There was only one piece of evidence to suggest Jimmy was still somewhat intact, whether that be mentally, physically, or possibly even just a small percentage of one of those things;  _His hand._ It was only the fist twisting fingers into Gary’s coat across his far shoulder that kept Smith from assuming the worst. Something in the clawing grip, half drunk from pain, was still tenacious somehow. Still resilient, insistent, _alive_. The grip kept James from collapsing face forward across the street. And even that imagined fate was still typically very Hopkins. Leave it to Jimmy to take himself out via blunt force trauma straight to the head. Smith scowled, and wrapped an arm around Jimmy’s waist.  
   
“Why do you WEIGH so much? Jesus! No _wonder_ throwing _bricks_ at you doesn’t do a _damn thing_ , you _stupid neanderthal_.” Gary wheezed beneath the other boy’s arm, before taking the opportunity to bolster him up more securely. They took the corner back out onto the main street at a painstaking pace.

Jimmy said nothing, only nodding through his fog. Gary watched him hawkishly out of the corner of his eye, watched as blood dribbled thickly past his lips, watched as it fell in fat drops off the curve of his bowed chin. He _looked_ like _shit_. Involuntarily, Gary’s face narrowed in concern. He ran his tongue along his teeth, still tasting the copper lingering there. That kiss had been… unexpected. Did Jimmy finally have genuine brain damage? In what world did he think going back to the lighthouse was acceptable after apparently taking _a sharp object_ to the _gut_? Could his already simplistic mind really afford to burn out even just a few extra neurons? Nothing like the soppy way he had drunkenly and lovingly regarded Gary in the alley illustrated that problem more. Jimmy had never in his life been _happy_ to see Gary.  Accepting, maybe. Relieved, possibly? Relieved in the twisted way where he knew about, and then agreed to participate in, the insane mutual pact they shared to witness the darkest parts of one another. But that wasn’t love. If Hopkins wanted a ride to hell in Gary’s hand basket, so be it. But when had Jimmy started being so _glad_ about it?

_Though, was that really such a bad a thing?_ Another dark voice whispered. Wasn’t a reaction _still a reaction?_ So why should this be so different?

 

“Don’t worry about _where_ we’re going, ok?”

 

It felt almost good, for once. To be the one finally and actually in control.

 

“Just _do_ what I _say_ and you’ll be-“

 

 

The plank cracked the back of Gary’s skull in a flash of white pain, and he pitched forward wordlessly. Jimmy’s body was lost from him as blinding stars crackled across his eyes. For long seconds he floated sightless, stunned, beyond nausea, before a tingling in his palms pulled back the veil and he saw he was on all fours in the middle of the road. He blinked once, a strand of bloody saliva stretching nearly to the pavement.

“Whad’ I tell you, boss? Whad’ I say? I said! I says, _‘he’s with the creep’_ , boss, _that’s_ what I said!”

“What are ya doin? Hold his head, _hold his head!_ Jesus, Boss, Jimmy’s got it bad!”

“Is that his blood? Move his hand outta the way for chrissakes.”

_“Sssssshit.”  “Damn!” “Whose got a smoke?” “He aint dead yet, calm down.”  
_  
“Holy shit, you were right, De Luca! It’s the werewolf!”

“Will you cut that shit out, Hal? You read too many comic books.”

“No, for _real_ this kid’s the werewolf! I seen it!”

“ _You_? You saw _Gary Smith_ … turn _werewolf?”_

“Well… ok, ok, not _me_ , but, it’s the talk of the _town_ man! Everybody knows it! He was up at that crazy house for a year, man! A whole _year_! You know better than anybody, boss! Right? That place ain’t got nothin but crazies and aliens all _waiting_ _in line_ to get all kinda experimented on and zapped up with electro-“

“SHUT IT already, Esposito! Ain’t no way this kid’s a werewolf. Hey, Smith. Are you a werewolf? _Are_ you or ain’t you?”

Gary swallowed once.

“…Maybe you hit him too hard.”

“Will you _can it? I did not!_ He’s, uh… he’s fine! _Look_ , he’s fine!”

With a rough yank, Gary felt himself grabbed by his hair and hauled to his knees. He tottered there nauseously, before his sluggish hand went up to wipe his bloody spit away.

“Whad’ good old Hal just say? Huh? Huh? Look at his damn face, you guys! It’s covered in blood! _Werewolf_. When I’m right _I’m right._ ”

 A few feet in the distance, a broad black shadow moved past Gary in a crowd of other shadows. Thick italian accents. Popped leather collars.  He didn’t need to see Johnny Vincent’s face to know it was his hand gripping his scalp. Christ, this _would_ just be their fucking luck right now.

Gary grimaced, setting his canines on edge even as the fist in his hair pulled his head back. “I’m… not a _werewolf_ , you… _greasy lapdogs_ , I’m a SMITH.”

“ _Sure_ you are, right. A Smith! Well _whoopee doo for you!_ What the hell did you do for all daddy’s _money_ , huh? Just burn our school down.” One sinister shadow circled closer. Lefty De Luca, a closer streetlight revealed. Gary eyed him cautiously as, just behind Lefty’s shoulder, he could distantly see a gaggle of greasers squatting down by Jimmy.

“Give me a break, _‘our school’_?” Smith spat. “Can you _dirty scumbags_ even _read_?”   

The kick that landed in Gary’s stomach freed him from Vincent’s grip on his scalp. Johnny shoved him into the foot from behind, and satisfied at the deep groan of pain, the Greaser king finally meandered out from behind him to watch as Gary bent his forehead to kiss the street.

“What were you doing with our Jimmy just now, rich boy?” Johnny Vincent asked with the comfortable calm of someone unusually used to interrogations. “Did you finally think you could _pop_ him one if it was just, uh, you know, _you two_? Like, mano a mano? If he was drunk or somethin? If he was all alone? Is that how you fight now, you little _puke_? Huh?? Like a goddamn coward creepin around like a spider in the _shadows_?”

The next kick caught Gary under the chin, ripping his bottom lip. The mouthful of blood he spit in a violent burst almost hit the sidewalk, and left him coughing as liquid ran backwards into his lungs.

“I didn’t DO THAT!” Smith spat, half rising from his bloody crouch as Johnny’s subordinates moved in to circle around him. “Do I LOOK LIKE I have a _knife_ on me? I’m not trying to get _expelled_ again, like _some people_.”

Peanut Romano clicked his switchblade open with a flick of the wrist, and they made silent eye contact, stopping Gary’s immediate next words.

Johnny meandered forward again instead, his earring glittering brightly in the otherwise dark street. “We _know_ it was you, Smith. Don’t _lie_. Jimmy aint the kind to just… hide in a hole, you know? He was _juuuuust fine_ before you and yer _rich daddy_ walked back into the picture. Now look at ‘im! He don’t _ride_ with us no more! He don’t play _pool_ , he don’t even _smile_ like he used to! Yeah well, we heard you tried to finish what you started at that wedding, right? You think we’re gonna _stand around_ and let you tear him apart? _Again_?? Yeah, that’s right. Way I figure it, you’ve _had it out_ for our friend Jim here since the day they let you back into our stinking school.”

In the background, Norton’s shadow lowered closer to Jimmy. “Boss, Jimmy says he wants ta go back to the beach! He don’t want to go to no hospital.”

“Well, put him in the Buick!”

Without thinking, Gary surged forward, and was instantly caught up in five different wrestling arms. “NO, you CAN’T TAKE HIM THERE! It’s _filthy_! He’ll get an INFECTION, someone _stabbed_ him, you can’t just let him go to _sleep in the dirt_ and HOPE FOR THE BEST. He’s not a _dog_!”

Johnny and Peanut turned as one to give Smith a surprised look, listening to the oddly vulnerable twang of panic as he continued to shout.

“Read a BIOLOGY TEXTBOOK for once, you failed abortions! Did you all get _lobotomized_?? How can you _not see_ that he has to GO TO A HOSPITAL and get PROPERLY TREATED? You can’t just _superglue_ him back together! LET GO OF ME!”

Five pummeling fists pounded down in equal fury, ripping Gary back off his feet and throwing him hard on the ground. His arms flew up over his face and he howled in fury as five sets of feet kicked him until he stopped struggling. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard Johnny Vincent calling them off, though the sudden overwhelming noise of his own pulse thudding in his ears deafened Gary momentarily to all other things. He breathed in shocked breaths and trembled beneath an ice cold sweat, afraid to sit up.  

“Johnny, maybe Smith is right.”  Peanut’s reasonable whisper sounded distant, as if encapsulated in a jar. “Jim’s a tough bastard, but, he’s got the money for it now, right? So better safe than sorry.”

A lingering silence stretched out, where the greasers stared at Johnny Vincent, and Johnny Vincent turned a contemplative eye down at Gary’s bleeding face.

“So, what’s in it _for you, werewolf?_ ” the king asked unkindly. He seemed not to want to listen, though something worked favorably together now in Peanut’s voice joined with the truth of Gary’s words.

Gary swallowed a mouthful of blood, then let an incredulous laugh cut painfully past his split lip. He rolled onto his back and slid a look of dazed contempt up at the circle above him, settling briefly on each face. How had it taken him until this moment to realize his relationship with Jimmy had carried him farther away from reality than he had ever thought possible?  
   
“What do I get? _Nothing!_ ” The words spilled out ugly and honest. “ _He’s my brother_.”

When Peanut nodded approvingly, Gary sensed that he had won.

 

 

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

 

Jimmy's head throbbed painfully and his mouth was dry. He shifted in bed and heard the sheets rustle like paper, felt every little tender muscle cry out in indignation when he shifted. He worked up some spit and tried to swallow it, trying to just magically self-hydrate himself back to sleep. But it was too late, he'd noticed the pain, and waking was setting in. 

 

He cracked open two crusty eyes and scowled at his tiny hospital room, his hospital bed, his hospital shirt, his scummy little hospital socks slipped halfway off his feet. _How the fuck did I get myself into this mess_ , he wondered. _Why do I feel like I've been standing at the wrong end of the batting cage._

 

He tried to get to his elbows and felt a sharp pain in his abdomen—not on his skin, but _inside_ his body. That made him remember. The group of strange boys he'd swear he'd never met before, but who still felt unsettlingly familiar. The stupid, ill-timed bravado. How close he'd come to ending someone's life over nothing, a bump in the shoulder and a series of bad phone calls. "My mommy made me cry, Your Honor," he briefly saw himself, pale and weepy and inexplicably thirteen, in the courthouse of his mind. _Yeah, right. Fuck you, Jimmy._

 

Then the end of the fight flooded back to him in a sick wave. _I almost... no, I wouldn't have_. _I let go before I... didn't I? Wouldn't I?_  He felt that odd flutter of panic in his chest again, the kind that had been so foreign to him before the last few days. He felt hot. He started to get up, to get out of there, to clear his head. 

 

But as he turned to swing his thick legs off the side of the hospital cot, he saw there was someone else with him in the tiny room. Slumped in a chair, his arms folded defensively over his chest as if he were arguing his right to be there even while asleep. 

 

Gary. 

 

Jimmy'd never seen him asleep before, and he regarded this moment as a minor miracle, on par with turning water to wine or growing a kid's legs back (or whatever it was Jesus had done—Jimmy'd been failing the shit out of Catholic school even _before_ they'd kicked him out). It was like catching a wild animal sleeping—it just _didn't happen_. No matter the number of times Jimmy had passed out in front of (or on top of) Gary the past few weeks, Gary had never—would never— sleep over. He slunk off every time, usually after Jimmy was asleep. It was his way. Probably couldn't tolerate Jimmy's smell post-coitus, or his stubborn insistence on continuing to breathe past his moment usefulness.

 

Still.

 

Gary had come for him. 

 

His bangs were pushed off his face in disarray, and his body managed to be incredibly tense and rigid even in repose, like he could leap up and sock someone (Jimmy, probably) within a second of waking. But where Jimmy expected to see a scowl, Gary's face was expressionless, his brow uncharacteristically smooth. No savage grin, no sadism. No irritation or rage. No triumph, no disgust, no arousal. No, Gary was unbelievably, uncharacteristically peaceful. Just looking at him made Jimmy feel warm and soporific. Protective and safe at the same time. 

 

There was _something_ about Gary that was bothering him, though, and he eventually fell back asleep still frowning at him, trying to put it together in his hung-over way. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

He dreamt about the bruises on the side of Gary's pale jaw. He saw them now. What had been bothering him. The scrapes running up and down his forearms, visible where his dirty green sweater was rolled up to his elbows. Traces of blood and iodine on the side of his brow. Swollen skin, broken bone, clotted blood.  _I made those,_ Jimmy suddenly knew, looking at Gary and feeling sick to his stomach with guilt. _I don't remember it but... I did that._

 

He tried to rub off some of the iodine—wet his finger and thumb with spit, the way his mom used to do when he was little and she'd still cared about dirt on his face—but when he pulled back his hands he saw that he'd removed Gary's face instead. No eyes or mouth; just an angular, featureless expanse of skin.

 

Jimmy cried out, jerking away, but Gary turned his sightless face to follow him, the lines of his skull clearly visible. Jimmy tried to run but there was no escape as Gary advanced on him. As he closed in, Jimmy could see bruises blossoming where his eyes should have been, tiny vessels bursting into angry blood-black pupils, and a thin knife wound tearing across his mouth. He felt those familiar fingers gripping into his shoulders, bringing him closer, the blood mouth widening—

 

And then he was being shaken awake. 

 

 

 

 

**GARY**

  

 

The sound of screaming had become, after a year of living in an asylum, a noise Gary thought that he would have grown used to by now. He recalled how horrible it had been, those first few weeks, to be yanked back up into consciousness after maybe an hour of sleep by someone actively _(and loudly)_ bemoaning their own screwed up existence. Even for Gary Smith, _Boy Genius (TM),_ it had been a task to digest that particular experience. He had failed, at first. Gary had failed in the insidious way where he had pushed the noise disdainfully aside whenever he heard it.  He had liked to repeat to himself, over and over, like praying, that the sound of screaming in the night was only reserved for people who were actually, really insane. Not like him. Never for _a Smith_. Never for _Gary_. He had recognized his own lie, but out of necessity had learned to believe it anyway. If he hadn't, his survival would have been at stake.

 

But then, to say he was numb to those experiences now wasn't quite right either, was it?  So much had happened since Gary had inhabited his small, mildewing cell on top of the dreary hill at Happy Volts Asylum. Much more than he could gather together, even using the full extent of his own extremely vivid imagination. What came after, everything after, after the wedding, after the first time he had touched, been touched, after he had re-enrolled in all his classes, after he had looked at Jimmy's kicking feet from the bottom of the school swimming pool, all of it had come together into a singular wall between who he was now, and who he had once been. Everything was _different_. And now, as the sound of screaming pulled him up through translucent purple layers of sleep, he knew as he woke that he couldn't just roll over and ignore the sound of someone else's pain anymore. Not without feeling his own sympathetic twang of pain burbling up from deep within himself. The world, he was learning more and more, was made up of all the same unfortunate fucked up material.

 

Before his eyes were even fully open, Gary threw himself across Jimmy's thrashing body, shoving him hard back down into the hospital mattress and riding his nightmare out. Pain registered a second later as Gary's body rejected his own actions, every inch of him throbbing in echoing shapes of greaser boots, and of callused fists a conscious Gary would have been more humiliated that he hadn't been able to fend off. A louder snarl cut past his split lip, and the sharp heat of pain brought him fully back into himself. He panted against Jimmy, holding him down as the yelling subsided. Smith lingered, breathing heavily through his nose until the thick limbs beneath him settled. Gary allowed his muscles to relax, until after a long, delirious stretch, he blinked the stars out of his vision and looked down at the other teenager. Jimmy stared back at him, bleary, but awake.

 

Gary blinked, staring into Jimmy's eyes, once, twice. And then like lightning striking, he drew suddenly back and punched Jimmy across the jaw as hard as he could. He heard the wet _'ulp!'_ of Jimmy biting his own tongue, and he staggered back, his heart thudding chaotically in his own chest. Gary stood there, amazed at himself, before dropping again with suddenly rubber limbs back into the chair he had been sleeping in just a few short minutes ago.

 

"...Sorry." Smith breathed after a long surprised pause, before his eyes widened at his own voice. He couldn't recall the last time he had said that word with any true sincerity. Had he _ever_?

 

A deafening silence rose up between them, more emotional than literal. The wet sound of Jimmy rubbing his bloody lip was audible even to Gary. It was a nauseating noise, punctuated by the already sharp wheeze that came from Jimmy's core, resonating from his gut, now wrapped up like a Christmas present in white linen bandages.

 

What was he... supposed to _say_ now? Like everything about their dumb relationship, this interaction was shitty, spontaneous, and unexpectedly awkward.

 

"...You... _didn't_ _come_." The words supplied themselves. They were the only feasible explanation. For the punch, for Gary's unexpected presence. For everything, really. Was there anything else Gary could say that was more succinct than that? Despite even the petulant accusation in his voice? His wondering look turned sharp, pained. He ran his tongue over his split lip and cast his eyes out into the empty space of the room. Gary had _lots of things_ he _should have_ been screaming about at this particular moment. Getting passed up _one time_ seemed, in comparison, sort of stupid. And  yet, there it was. Funny thinking about it, when _exactly_ would be an adequate distant point in time from which to start a Master List of Smith Complaints? If the world had any sort of justice, Gary never would have met this brutish idiot in the first place. Was that a good place to start? The day they met? Things could have been so different. _So different_... Jimmy could have never come to this town, and Gary could have never been in the situation he found himself in now. He never would have been forced to wonder if all of their pain, both shared and not shared, could have somehow been avoided. He never would have had to wonder if they, inadvertently, had somehow ruined each other. Instead, Gary blinked quietly, letting the words settle. A hand ran up through his hair, and he flinched as his fingers skimmed where Johnny Vincent had pulled out a clump of scalp.

 

" _You didn't come_." He said it again, more seriously. As it settled, he knew that it was revealing him. It bared him naked more than some dumb angry phonecall. More than letting Jimmy's hands touch him where they wanted. Gary's thick brow grew angry, and he frowned at nothing, and at everything, refusing to meet Jimmy's gaze. 

 

 

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

 

The feeling of a mouth full of blood was becoming an annoying constant in Jimmy's life. His stomach turned in on itself from the taste of it, starting to drip down the back of his throat, and from the remnant anxieties of the nightmare. 

 

This was not what he had been expecting. Gary's anger, oh certainly, and he was surprised he'd gotten off with just one punch to the face. But not the vulnerability. 

 

He'd watched Gary all that time in the asylum, sneaking in through vents, stealing uniforms, or just slipping in through unlocked doors. Peering down at him from hiding places, Jimmy lurked, waiting to see Gary really _break._ With bated breath, he wanted to know that Gary was _punished_ for what he'd done to Jimmy, to Bullworth, to Jimmy's friends and lovers. 

 

But even then, even bruised and beaten Gary had seemed so stoic, unbreakable. Jimmy had known he was in pain, cognitively, and on some personal atomic level that he was just now beginning to really identify. But that wasn't a fact that Gary privileged on the outside world, certainly not on such a low point in the universal order as Jimmy Hopkins. But now it was in the air between them. It was palpable in his voice. Jimmy had _hurt_ him. Which was so fucking _stupid,_ because Jimmy had purposefully broken their engagement in order _not_ to hurt him—he'd thought he was _protecting_ him from whatever ugly thing had lodged itself in him. But somehow by not going to him he'd done damage to something he didn't realize was damageable, because he didn't realize it was even there. 

 

Had he fucked it all up  _already?_ Before he could begin to know what it _was?_

Zoe, Pete, even his mother. Why did he always, always fail the people he loved?

 

_Fuck this._

 

Jimmy was so fucking tired of awkward silences. Of being contrite, of feeling ashamed, fucking _wallowing_. Jimmy was a man of action, goddamnit, and he was fucking _sorry._ He was _so fucking sorry._

Jimmy grunted in pain as he swung his legs off the side of the hospital bed and thumped to the floor. For a minute he just stood over Gary, trying to burn his apology into his mind. Gary refused to meet his stare; he was impervious to his jutted jaw, his Frankenstein face, his hands balled into fists. As always, when words failed Jimmy, he'd have to use his fists. He sunk to his knees between Gary's legs and winced as the cold tile stung his knees and the skin down his shins. A draft of sterilized air wafted up his paper gown, temporarily inflating him as he sunk to the floor.

 

Gary still wouldn't look at him, and Jimmy grabbed the arms of the chair and wrenched it forward, pulling their bodies flush. He finally felt Gary's hands on his chest, then, trying to push him off, but he wasn't pushing with full strength (out of care for Jimmy's well-being?) and Jimmy's resolve was unbreakable. Careful not to give Gary enough room to pull away, he let go of the chair arms one at a time and wrapped his thick arms around Gary's torso, pushing his bloody face into Gary's stomach, leaning heavily against him, the edge of the chair scratching at his stitches. He could still feel Gary pushing at him, clawing at the exposed skin around his neck, behind his ears. 

 

But Jimmy wouldn't be shaken off. Gary would have to knock him unconscious first, and even then, _good luck._  He dug new bruises into Gary's sides with his fingers, squeezing air out of him. He nuzzled his massive, crushed face into Gary's sweater, pushing his shaved head into him like a dog who knows he's done wrong. He could feel Gary's muscles beneath his clothes wincing and shying at the force of the contact—he too was covered in bruises, and Jimmy would get to the bottom of _that_ soon enough—but there was no room in him then for softness or hesitancy. He pushed his bleeding face into Gary's bruised torso, tried to press his pain into Gary's, make them one single damaged person. To show them that they already _were._

Suddenly he felt Gary freeze in his arms, and he froze too, listening to the sound of shoes squeaking outside the door. He jerked his head up and made eye contact with Gary, and for one heart-stopping moment he really considered just _not letting go_. Letting whoever it was come in and see him as he really was, see them as they truly were. Putting an end to this stupid charade. Gary's eyes were opaque, however, and he couldn't determine the guidance he needed. In the end he tumbled back into his bed cursing as the nurse entered, probably popping a stitch or three.

 

"Oh, you're awake. That's convenient. Please gather your things, you're being discharged."

 

Jimmy blinked at her as she moved around the room, switching machines off and wheeling them around the room. He looked at Gary again for guidance, but his step-brother's brain seemed to be temporarily shut off too, his thick brows drawn together in puzzlement.

 

"Uh... are you sure? I'm not a doctor or anything, but, I don't know... I'm kinda still bleeding here."

 

"Of course she isn't sure," Gary cut in, his tone venomous, his eyes locked on the nurse. "She's made a _mistake_."

 

"Afraid not," she sighed—she was undoubtedly used to worse abuse. She stopped then, wrote something down on a chart, seemed to fiddle with her pen. Suddenly Jimmy was afraid of what she was about to say.

 

"We just got a call from your insurance, Mr. Smith"—and it was a moment before Jimmy realized she was speaking to _him_ _—_ "and they were, uh, unable to coordinate the remainder of your care with your father. I'm sorry but we have instructions to let you go."

 

She didn't have to say it for Jimmy to understand what she meant. Gary's dad was tired of him eating up insurance money, and he'd cut it off.

 

Gary was already getting out of the chair, and Jimmy shot his arm out to grab him before he did something they would all regret. Gary turned his sneering glare on Jimmy but he held fast, let his hand fall down to gently encircle Gary's wrist. His eyes drifted down to the wet bloody spot on Gary's stomach. 

 

"It's fine," he said, and the words came out softer and less confident than he'd intended. "I was getting pretty bored of this place anyway."

 

She was still looking at them warily. What must she be thinking? _How close these brothers are._  

 

"Come on, Gary, let's get out of here," he said, forcing bravado into his voice. He really did want to get out of there. The more he turned it over in his mind, actually, the more he realized Mr. Smith was giving him a gift. Letting him be alone with Gary quicker. He would mentally thank his step-father later, as Jimmy pushed his son against the nearest wall and made him _fully understand_ the depths of his remorse. 

 

"Grab my clothes and let's go _home,_ " he said, finally cracking a grin. As he said it he rubbed a small circle into Gary's pulse point with his thumb, trying to will his meaning and intent, and saw the flush of recognition creeping up the base of Gary's neck.

 

"Please get dressed quickly," she said, already halfway out the door. 

 

"There are cars downstairs waiting to take you back to Bullworth. Apparently the principal himself is here to see Gary back, and he is impatient for you both to come down."

 

Jimmy's hand fell from Gary's wrist and smacked bonelessly against the metal side of the cot. 

 

_God damnit._

 

 

 

**GARY**

 

 

As expected, Crabblesnitch revoked their city privileges. For Jimmy, the punishment must have been old hat. Hopkins was notorious around campus for frequently being in and out of detention, and honestly, Smith wondered at what Crabblesnitch was getting at with that. Jimmy regularly snuck off campus, regardless of any imposed restrictions. Was there, somehow, a trap hidden in it? Maybe. But what Gary _really_ _hadn't_ expected was the extreme length of their suspension's duration;  two months. A month each for a crime committed (apparently equally) by both of them.

 

It was hilarious in that completely un-funny way which makes you exhausted, that financing a wing of the library couldn't make Crabblesnitch listen to the family name now. It didn't help Gary explain that, for once in their lives, Gary _hadn't_ been the one with intent to destroy. (Seriously, for _once_. _For once_.) That Jimmy _hadn't_ been the one to fracture Gary's ribs, or split the seam of his lip. (Again, the f _or once_ scenario was applied here.)  Huffing to himself as they sat in silence in the last of Crabblesnitch's caravan of cars, Gary dwelled on the werewolf joke Jimmy's filthy greaser pals had gotten so much mileage out of. Gary Smith certainly was NOT a werewolf. But the irony was present all the same. Nobody would listen to their version of events. It was irrelevant. The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, or something like that.  It was hard not to be resentful, so Smith didn't bother trying.

 

Gary had always known that the principal was a man primarily interested in dollar signs before human rights, but the lecture he and Jimmy had received later, after being gathered from the hospital, had bordered on obscenely incendiary. As Jimmy and Gary sat inches from one another in matching chairs at Crabblesnitch's desk like witnesses taking the stand, Smith wondered what they must have looked like from the outside. He was in the habit of toning out adult lectures of any kind, but in this particular instance, it was hard to ignore how battered they really were, and all that it implied. Gary's face had begun to bruise an ugly purple along his forehead and right cheekbone, matching an even more sinister green that spread out across his chin from beneath his split lip. Jimmy's swollen face wasn't much better, though, granted, his face _usually was_ an _ugly afterthought_ on a normal day. The way his thick palm rested against the tight bandages wrapped around his abdomen was worse, and it made Gary faintly nauseous just looking at him. So after a while, Gary simply stopped looking. It didn't take long to stop looking at his face either.

 

"I _ought_ to have you both _committed_ to the juvenile center for incurably naughty boys! You have _repeatedly_ made a mockery of the rules of this institution and of it's physical boundaries! You are both certainly VERY lucky that the generous alumni donations made regularly by your father has assured that the copious counts of property damage, vandalism, and assault charges, yes Smith _even_ the _harassment_ charges, are all barely negligible! And now you come to me with yet _another_ problem! And TOGETHER, no less! After I had _distinctly_ warned you both to keep your distance! Afte _r Mr. Smith_ had _distinctly warned you_! Don't tell me you boys have finally become _friendly_?"

 

"-No." Gary monotoned at the carpet at the exact same moment he heard Jimmy snort next to him.

 

Crabblesnitch stared at them for a beat, the rusty creaking of his brain gears practically audible as Gary waited with dull patience for him to come to any kind of conclusion. How much did he know? Had he been... _fully briefed_... by Smith Senior? About them? About what had happened? Without moving an inch, Gary's eyes slid up from the carpet to the principal's face. The older man's nostrils were flared with passion, and the mighty taxidermy condor mounted behind him spread itself like devil's wings, making Crabblesnitch look eye-rollingly majestic. Gary resisted for a millisecond, before actually going ahead and rolling his eyes.

 

"And YOU, Mr.Smith," Crabblesnitch caught on to the look instantly, dramatically zooming his focus. "YOU are the greatest disappointment of them all! Young Hopkins has at least made an effort in the past to uphold the honor of his school, and to keep the general peace, _this_ _particular incident quite obviously not included_. But _you!_ Such a bright young mind has gone _entirely_ to pot with you! Head Boy, athletic superstar, honor roll! And _now_ look at you! Boys will be boys, but tying your principal to a chair is no way to get ahead in life! Did you think your instigation of chaos across campus would have brought you renown? Just look what your efforts have brought you now! I say a year in the Asylum may just have corrupted _anything_ left still decent and worthy of salvaging in that roomy skull of yours! Did they fry your brain like an egg up there, boy? Well? Did they?"

 

Without checking himself, Gary rose sharply from his chair, jaw clenched, all the color rushing from his face. It took a second to realize Jimmy had also risen, though his thick hand clutched Gary's elbow, pulling him back like a boulder hanging at the joint. Crabblesnitch looked surprised at first, then haughty and amused. The look followed Gary as he haltingly sat back down again, Smith pointedly not looking at Hopkins.

 

"Yes, that's right. USE that brain, young man! If there's anything still in there. One single toe out of line from either of you just _once_ more, and you are _both_ expelled! So do the smart thing. Do the _safe_ thing. You two are to remain on campus without exception for the following two months. You are not to attend classes, and you are _absolutely not_ permitted to interact with one another, or you Hopkins with any of your riffraff city friends, for any reason other than a state of family emergency. Have I made myself clear?"

 

Oh, it was clear. Gary grinned a dead grin at the carpet again, not looking at Jimmy, not thinking about him, willing himself to lean farther away in the prison of his chair.

  
_"Have_ I??"

_"Yes sir." "Yes sir."_

 

 

 

  
_Everything_ was clear now. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading this far if you actually made it here through all 95,000+ words of this most heinous of teen melodramas! The end is finally coming into view, so look forward to things beginning to rise to a crescendo in the near future. What lies in store ahead for the boys, you ask? certainly christmas! an excess of pete kowalski! (is that some faint petey/gary i smell??) parental indignation! general mayhem and destruction! and of course, the long awaited PROM.
> 
> dun dun DUUNNNNN!
> 
> more soon on the horizon


	8. Divergences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Truths and lies are traded as the Smith family situation becomes unbearable.

 

 

 

 

**PETEY**

 

 

If Petey was surprised to see Gary wandering campus a few days later looking exactly like a rotting corpse, he was doubly surprised to see Jimmy harboring a stomach wound and a look in his eye like he had been watching someone curb stomp kittens for the last three days. If one was beaten, wouldn't the logical outcome be that the other one was happy? But it wasn't that simple anymore, was it? Not after what Petey knew. Or at the very least, what was nearly undeniably inferred. It was only his whispered conversation with Gord Vendome that kept Petey back now. It was all that kept his desire at bay to scramble over to either one of them with the concern of friendship. He _wanted_ to. He _would have_. But...? He would have wanted to begin that conversation with _'what happened?'_ Though if Gord's secret was anything to go by, Petey didn't need to ask. He already knew. It was only a matter now of _'why'_ and ' _where'_?  And in complete honestly with himself, those were things Petey wasn't too keen to actually know. At first, he had been too hurt to even believe. 

 

Neither Jimmy nor Gary came to class. First for a week, and then longer. More often than not, when Petey rarely spotted one or the other, they often drifted aimlessly around campus buildings during off hours. Strangely, he watched them both most often in the library. They seemed to not be conscious of the other's presence, as they both preferred different parts of the huge, quiet building to haunt. Gary lingered upstairs by the world history and foreign non-fiction, often gathering piles of books to sit by the chess boards and pointlessly sift through. Jimmy sat on the ground floor by the checkout counter where he played long and drawn-out games of Grottoes & Gremlins, much to the delight of a faction of his nerdier subjects not used to that level of attention from an outsider. And then, finally came the day where they bumped into each other. Petey felt faintly incredulous that he should have been present at just the right moment. It was absurd, and admittedly intrusive, but the mystery surrounding his two best friends had become so great that Petey often found himself in the library, waiting for an opportunity from a distance to somehow solve the riddle they presented. He came to watch, both curious and hurt, and eventually his surveillance bore fruit.

 

They met on the stairs as Gary descended with a tall stack of Russian literature to check out, freezing both to their respective spot. Petey saw the instant electricity spring up in a hard current between them from where he sat across the upper floor, studying with Beatrice at one of the long wooden benches. It was almost voyeuristic in it's intrusiveness, and yet to any other person watching, the significance would be diminished. Kowalski watched anyway, grimacing, half out of the corner of his eye. He couldn't quite hear what they said, but when Jimmy spoke first, he thought there might have been an inflection of appeal in it, as if he might have been unjustly ignored for too long. Gary stared at him in silence for a long time, then resolutely looked away.

 

As Petey watched them watching each other, a sudden realization struck. When had been the last time Gary had actually tried to bully Jimmy? There was no more ugly bathroom graffiti. No more embarrassing PA announcements or incriminating banners. No locker room slander, and maybe most obviously, no new gossip. Jimmy hadn't been hip checked, jumped, wedgied, or accosted once since they had both returned to campus looking like pulped, rotting fruit. Not for the first or last time, Petey frowned sadly, and wondered where exactly he had been left behind in their unusual little 3-way friendship. If anyone could even call any of their relationships 'friendship' anymore.

 

Jimmy started forward, reaching a hand out, when Gary lurched forward again, violently dumping his stack of books into Jimmy's arms. The top volumes toppled over in a noisy waterfall as Hopkins scrambled to grip them all, and Gary briskly went down the stairs past him, roughly bumping shoulders as he went.  Petey stood up to watch Gary's exit, ignoring Beatrice's litany of questions behind him. When Gary noisily slammed past the double front doors and out of the building, Petey sat heavily back down again onto his bench with a dull thump.

 

"That Smith boy is so nasty! I don't understand why you wish to continue to associate with him, Peter. I can't stand the way he treats Jimmy Hopkins!" Beatrice's wheedling tone cut across Petey's stupor, and he looked up at her.

 

Of course she was mad. Gary had been nothing but monstrous to her, so of course she didn't get it. She didn't get him, like she definitely didn't get Jimmy either, though for entirely different reasons. Pete smiled a little in compassion, prompting Beatrice to offer back a small, shy smile of her own. 

 

"Because... they're my _friends_." He said meekly.

 

Beatrice blinked as Kowalski suddenly rose to his feet. He couldn't play this game anymore, he realized. Sure, he was mad, and hurt, but what ever came from stuffing those feelings down into some deep internal trashcan? Clearly his idiot friends had arrived at some kind of stupid impasse, and Petey liked to think that out of the three of them, he had always been the voice of reason.

 

"Gimmie a minute Beatrice, ok?"

 

"But I need a partner to finish this paper on _Splice Diagram Singularities and_ _The Universal Abelian Cover of Graph Orbifolds_! If I don't ace this I'll never get into college and therefore never get into graduate school and the whole world will be just _ruined_!" 

 

"Five minutes, ok? I promise!" But Petey was already jogging towards the staircase, and he turned before he could see the pucker of Beatrice's disappointed frown as it vanished around the corner. 

 

Petey took the stairs two at a time, before landing solidly a step below where Jimmy was gathering Gary's spilled books and grumbling under his breath.

 

"Jim! Need some help here? Let me help you!"

 

The shorter boy instantly bent and began gathering books without waiting for an answer. Without acknowledging how long it had been since they had spoken last. Without letting that get in the way of what he was about to do. After he had a healthy armful, he ushered Jimmy down the rest of the stairs where they dumped the books out on one of the round tables. Petey took a steadying breath and dusted off his hands, before turning on James. His palms instantly slicked with cold sweat.

 

"So, what was that? Did you guys break up or something?"

 

There was a deafening silence for the solid space of a heartbeat, before Kowalski tentatively pulled his gaze up to meet his friend's.

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

 

 

The nervous giggle that erupted out of Jimmy at that moment was much too loud and too fast. If the sudden look of worry that creased the corners of Petey's eyes was anything to go by, the note of hysteria in it hadn't been lost on him, either. A loud "SHHH" came from over by the librarian's desk, and Pete winced, but he didn't drop his eyes from Jimmy's. He was waiting to see what he would say.

 

_"Ah yeah, you know us—lover's quarrel."_

"What, me and Gary? Come on Mr. Valedictorian, I know you ain't stupid."

 

Jokes and excuses and sputtered negations all crowded at the tip of Jimmy's tongue, but he bit down and kept quiet. He suddenly felt himself on the edge of a precipice, and saying the wrong thing now would send him tumbling over the edge.

 

Pete was looking him in the eye for the first time in months, holding the eye contact for maybe longer than the nervous boy ever had—waiting on _Jimmy_ , as always, to set the tone. To define what came next. Pete _knew_ , Jimmy was suddenly sure, about them. But the way he'd phrased it, half-jokingly, Pete was giving him a choice. Come clean or keep lying. And Jimmy knew with sad affection that even if he chose to keep lying, he wouldn't lose Pete. He'd always be there for him, in some capacity—but if he lied now, he'd be slapping a bandage over a wound that hadn't had a chance to heal, and there would always be rot underneath.

 

He was being extended a gracious branch of peace. Even if Pete rejected him after Jimmy confirmed the truth—even if Pete spit in his face and then put on a school assembly to let everyone know the truth about _the Smith boys_ —this, right now, was doing Jimmy a favor. This, as all things Pete did, was being done for Jimmy's benefit. By offering to hear him, Pete was offering to absolve him.

 

Pete was starting to look dismayed and embarrassed, but Jimmy still didn't have the words, so he took him by his skinny elbow and dragged him outside. If this was a confession, he needed to find a confessional.

 

 

 

**PETEY  
**

 

 

There was a new row of vending machines behind the gym protected by a grubby metal cage. The one on the left end, though, was positioned carelessly so that a few swift kicks through the bars could knock loose a can. Pete had seen a couple of the jocks doing it before—particularly enraging since he knew _they_ had money to burn on soda—but Pete never had the will or nerve to do it himself. He glanced nervously around the empty field as Jimmy kicked a dent into the side of the machine, scowling. The first can rolled out and hit the pavement, erupting into a sugary, caffeinated spray. Jimmy snatched it up immediately and shotgunned it, then beat out two more before handing one to Pete. Pete took it self-consciously, suddenly reminded of his uncle handing him a beer at Christmas that he'd been too anxious and rule-abiding to drink. 

 

Pete followed Jimmy across the football field, watching his shoulders as he went. Jimmy had grown, he suddenly realized. He hadn't been close enough to him in months to really notice, but he was definitely taller, broader--if that was possible. Who was this strange man leading him into the trees, and what had he done with Jimmy?

 

Finally he seemed to find a spot he was comfortable with. He collapsed to the ground with a heavy _whumph_ and patted the grass beside him. Now that this--whatever this was--was actually happening, Pete felt nauseated with worry, like _he_ was the one who'd done something wrong. As he lowered himself to sit cross-legged beside Jimmy, he even found himself wanting to stammer apologies into the silence that hung between them for the next few minutes. Over the most random things—for forgetting his math homework three weeks ago, for having had a wet dream about Beatrice on Tuesday. Anything to fill the silence other than the sounds of Jimmy slurping his cola and ripping out handfuls of dead grass from the November earth.

 

Kowalski was about to break—just get up and leave, apologizing for bothering him—when Jimmy finally started to talk. Slow at first, then fast, then tripping over his tongue, Jimmy told Pete everything. About the wedding, about the summer spent swimming in the bay. About Zoe. About his mother, and his step-father, and the phone call. About Gary.

 

Jimmy talked and talked his voice hoarse, as the sun went down and a chill set in. It had easily dropped below freezing, but Jimmy kept talking and Pete kept listening with the cold, still unopened can of soda clutched between his numbing fingers. A dam inside Jimmy had broken, and he spilled confession after confession into the cold, dark air between them.

 

Pete wondered with detachment how he was supposed to be feeling. Anger, self-righteousness, sadness, betrayal; Pete Kowalski considered those emotions, turned them over carefully inside his head, and was left wanting. None of them fit. He felt... still. The closest he'd ever come to this feeling was when he was thirteen and babysitting his little cousin and she'd choked on that Christmas ornament. Instead of giving in to panic, his body had been filled with a cold quiet. He'd called the hospital, talked to his cousin in a soothing voice as blood dribbled out of her infant mouth, and reassured his aunt over the phone that everything was fine, all with a calmness that his normally anxious body found unprecedented. He knew now, like he knew then, that tonight would be different—tonight, in bed, this moment's revelations would wash over him in a tidal wave, and he'd be their prisoner. But now he felt like a priest at a deathbed, or an EMS worker at the scene of a heart attack. Collected. Empowered. Empty.

 

By the time Jimmy talked himself out, there was a ragged quality to his voice that made Pete glad for the darkness between them. There was a tone of finality at the end of each sentence which told Pete clearly that Jimmy didn't expect him to fix this—for which Pete felt an unexpected gratitude. They were broken, the three of them. Their relationship would never be the same again. Pete wondered distantly if this meant they were adults now. Something about the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve. Innocence, itself a scarce quantity in a place like Bullworth, was gone for good. Stupid, _greedy_ Jimmy. Unsatisfied that everyone at school loved him, he'd had to go and try to make Gary love him too. If only he'd come to Pete about it at the first—Jimmy went silent as he heard the crinkling of aluminum, the can crumpling in Pete's numb fingers—Pete could have told Jimmy what a lost cause it was, being loved by Gary Smith. What a _disaster_.

 

"You know, when I saw you two in the library this afternoon, I actually thought... I thought to myself—I can fix this."

 

A kind of hysterical giggle bubbled up out him, and for a while he just laughed, his breath coming in white puffs. 

 

"Me! Pete Kowalski! But I was so wrong... My two best friends in the whole world... you're completely unfixable." 

 

Jimmy's hulking shadow sat with his head bowed.

 

"Petey, I'm—"

 

"But that's why you're here, right?"

 

Jimmy turned his head to look at him then, his deep-set eyes shining in the darkness.

 

"At Bullworth, I mean. That's why we're all here. We're unfixable."

 

Pete pushed himself to his feet and brushed off the seat of his pants. When he stood up, the wintery night air cut through him, but he didn't cover up his arms or shiver. Instead he extended his hand down to Jimmy to help him stand up.

 

Jimmy just looked at it, and for a moment Pete thought he might refuse it. He imagined Jimmy staying out there all night, being found frozen in the morning—a lonely sentinel, choosing to enact his repentance through a rejection of the world and meaningless, dramatic self-flagellation.

 

But then Jimmy's hand was in his—too hot and too strong, like always—and Pete was almost falling over as Jimmy hauled himself to his feet. But Pete held on and stood straight, lending his friend his strength so he could stabilize himself. As he always would.

 

It hadn't been an apology, exactly. And it certainly wasn't forgiveness. But as they started back toward the boy's dorm, Pete thought, it was a beginning. Jimmy waited for him by the football field with his hands in his pockets while Pete ran back into the trees for his forgotten can. As he ran back he felt light and full of a terrifying, buzzing life. Rather than slowing down to grab it he kept running, and kicked it in a wide arc—spraying crystalline soda as it spun circles through the air. 

 

 

 

**GARY**  
 

 

“WHAT DOES IT EVEN MATTER ANYWAY?” Gary’s shouting filled up the bright and chilly afternoon.  “NOBODY’S GOING TO _CARE_ ENOUGH TO _LOOK_ THAT CLOSE IN THE _FIRST PLACE!_ ”

The girl ran sobbing down the brick walkway, swinging in a melodramatic arc as she hit the fountain. She was stupid. That was why it had been so easy to torture her in the first place. Gary stood some distance further down the path, observing with a faint air of lasciviousness. He snorted when he noticed her trajectory. She angled her small figure perfectly for the resulting crash straight into an unfortunately positioned Prefect, and they both went down in a tangle of limbs.  The prickly sensation of cold satisfaction rose the hairs on Gary’s neck and temporarily removed the concept of being chilly from his mind as he watched them struggle. He he stood in perfect stillness, as Prefect and student grappled temporarily with one another in a pile of winter layers and jabbing elbows. Gary’s hands still hung midair, frozen, from where until very recently he had been cruelly gesticulating. As the girl shoved her way free and tore off in a different direction, Prefect in hot pursuit, he slowly lowered them again. Was that it, then? For a long second, Smith huffed after her absence in the cold afternoon air, breath lingering opaquely in a puff of fog.

Despite the bright white burn of the unusually clear and sunny day, Smith grumbled at the cold as he turned and shoved his fists back into his pockets. He shuffled down the path, aimless again, his mind restless and roving in a way he remembered from some of the worse days of his childhood. He had always been _excellent_ at applying _selective memory_ to things, but the current result of that particular exercise now had put him in a strange mental place. He felt disjointed. Almost awkward. And assuredly grumpy. A glare took up residence on his gaunt face, and he let his eyes roam the scenery as he pulled the collar of his navy pea coat more tightly up around his neck.  He wasn’t thinking about Jimmy Hopkins.

He _wasn’t._

That was the whole point, wasn’t it? _Don’t_ think about him. Don’t think about him. _Don’t think about him._ Think about _something else_ for a change. Think about hurling rocks at the homeless man who begs behind the cafeteria. Think about slipping Hal Esposito a diuretic in his bleeder burger while he sits for his regular-as-clockwork lunch break by the auto shop. Think about scrambling the most important reference sections in the library before a big test and watch the resulting panic. Think about changing all of Russel Northrop’s grades to straight A’s and Darby Harrington’s to all D-’s, with a pissy F in physical education. Think about moving around Galloway’s secret liquor stash so he convinces himself he’s much drunker than he thought and ends up crying on Ms. Philips. Think about Jimmy Hopkins lying in an alley covered in blood.

_No!_ No. That was NOT— He _couldn’t_ — it _wasn’t about_ — Gary’s scowl became a snarl for a few tense seconds as he violently shoved the memory aside. He didn’t want to think about that night anymore. He had already thought about it too much. It had been too much. Too… _Too everything_. Too frightening, primarily. But not quite how it should have been frightening. Gary hadn’t been afraid of Jimmy’s greaser pals kicking the shit out of him, and he hadn’t been afraid of the repercussions he had known in his bones would follow from the school when he wrote Jimmy’s full name on the ER paperwork. He hadn’t even been afraid when he dozed off in a pulpy slump in that torturous hospital chair by comatose Jimmy’s bed. But he _had_ been afraid, _of himself_ , after. He had quaked like jello at his own violent reaction.  He _hit_ Jimmy. Without provocation. (unless he considered the whole night a provocation, which had a certain validity.) And later, he had trembled at the look of pain and love seen on Jimmy’s face. Gary still had the sweater he had worn that night, tucked safely away in the bottom drawer of his dresser back at Harrington House. It was stained with his blood. And Jimmy’s. Jimmy’s blood from the affectionate, apologetic head bump of a beaten dog nuzzling sorrowfully into their human’s lap. Jimmy hadn’t said the words… but then again, words never really _had_ been his forte. He hadn’t needed to use them for Gary to understand. In that way, their communication skills were growing stronger now than anyone else’s. Nonverbal to verbal. Physical to mental. Friend to friend.

And Gary didn’t want _anything to do with it_ anymore. Thinking about _why_ he didn’t was simply too big a concept. He only knew that he had gotten, unfathomably, too close for comfort.  Far, far, far _too close._

Memories of that night rose up around Gary as he shuffled down the path, lingering just on the edge of his consciousness like black smoke. He mentally swatted at it, scrounging for a sense of control again. Of himself, of his surroundings… it hardly mattered. When the rug had been so thoroughly yanked out from beneath his feet, anything and anyone would do. And so it was with a certain amount of luck that idiots kept crossing his path today. He liked torturing morons. It felt right. Especially if he was damned to stay on campus for an entire two months AND face exile from classes. What else did Crabblesnitch, or for that matter anyone else, expect him _to do?_ Screwing with the peons here was an old game. A familiar game. And out of all things in his current life, Gary Smith was in desperate need of a dose of familiarity.  

Maybe God was real after all, or maybe everything was a sham and nothing mattered, but when Pete Kowalski cut across the path in front of Gary a few yards up wrapped past his nose in a long blue scarf, Smith’s frown transformed instead into a subtle, predatory grin. If anyone was satisfying to bully, it was Petey.

“Hey! Little Petey! Hey, _princess_! Wait up!”

Up ahead, Peter froze, before taking a moment to turn in resignation. He frowned sadly back at Gary as the taller boy jogged up to meet his stride. When they were shoulder-to-shoulder, Pete looked away, and kept walking. A cold greeting, and unusual on a number of counts. Gary glossed over it with mild interest, but not concern.

“Where are you going, little bunny? Want some company?” Smith hummed, sing-songy tone clearly delighted at having discovered his favorite punching bag.

Petey huffed, very very quietly, and kept his eyes on the path ahead. “Nowhere. And not really. Can you even leave campus?”

“Come ON, you have to be going _somewhere_! Let me _guess_. You’re _goinggggg_ … to get hot and heavy with that _pimply_ nerd _Beatrice_ , right? She’s _giving it up_ for you, right?” Gary bumped his shoulder into Petey’s scapula a little too aggressively, sending the smaller boy staggering forward. He righted himself with a glare, but kept walking in silence. Gary sucked on his tongue in consternation.

“No? Yeah, she’s got a thing for Hopkins anyway. Are you going…. tooooo….. go _cry_ at the _pool_ because you’re so _disappointed_ you haven’t seen _wet balls in clingy swim trunks_ in over a _year_? Don’t be so bashful, little baby, it’s _perfectly natural_ at your age!”

“I’m GOING to the comic book store, alright?!?” Kowalski exploded, turning half in irritation to try and brush Gary off, to no avail. Gary pressed closer in, following in silence for a minute as he chewed on the concept. 

“You _know_ that place smells like _boiled cabbage_ , right? And nerd spunk? And _pit stink_?? Of course, those are all things you _actually really like_. Right, princess?” Smith finally eluded, sounding oddly casual. He slung an arm around Petey’s frustrated shoulder, eliciting an irritated grunt from the smaller boy.

“OK, Gary. Sure, whatever you say.” Petey continued to be uncomfortably distant.

Why wasn’t this working? Gary frowned, the look cutting deep into his face as he dragged Pete closer. Close enough to breath down his neck and impede his walking.

“…Are you going to meet your _boyfriend_?” The question was almost a menacing whisperer, and yet incredibly casual at the same time. “Good old Jimmy-boy? Gonna play some Dragons and Dingdongs in that _dark basement?_ With all the _doors locked?_ ”

Pete rolled his neck as they approached the front gate of the school, trying to shove Gary off, again to no avail. “…Yeah right, you _wish_ …”

“What?” The word barked sharply out of Gary’s mouth, and his feet dragged on the brick walkway, almost completely stopping them.

With a dramatic and completely uncharacteristic flourish, Petey finally drew up to a stop on the sidewalk in front of the main gate, and threw Gary’s arm roughly off his neck. Now, emboldened by his own actions, he turned his slight frame to stare up at his oldest friend and bully, side to side.

“I _said_ … _you wish!_ ”

The accusation hung loaded between them, and for a few long seconds, Gary had the decency not to say anything. 

The silence drew out as Gary now ran a much more acute and appraising gaze over Pete’s figure. The small teenager stared purposefully up from several layers of blue scarf, hung across the crisp, clean shoulders of a tan wool jacket that paired nicely with the red gleam of Kowalski’s hair in the afternoon sun. He stared directly into Gary’s eyes, and for the first time, Gary thought he recognized something hurt there. Not Petey’s regular hurt, the kind that came from throwing him around or calling him names, but the kind Gary remembered from their childhood when he would abandon Pete in the woods, or blame accidents on him, or come up behind him very quietly and shove him down into the rocky dirt in front of their parents. A hurt akin to betrayal.

The regular foot traffic of students coming and going went unheard as Gary peered down at his oldest friend, at once knowing something had changed.

“…I don’t know _what_ you’re talking about, little Petey.” Smith carefully pronounced. “You _imagining_ things now? Because I know a _doctor_ if you want a _referral_.”

That seemed like the wrong thing to say. Almost immediately, Petey rose a hand to his face to rub across his furrowed brow before snapping his eyes back up in anger. “God, _why_ do you _always_ do that? Can’t you stop _lying_? Like, even _once_? For _one_ time? You’re _always lying_!”

Panic stung Gary in the center of his chest as hot as a wasp’s strike, and anger rose instinctively to protect him.  He jabbed an accusatory finger into Petey’s chest, growing quickly cruel. _“I’m_ not the one who spent _a whole year_ hiding from _my_ best friend, who by the way _really could have used_ some support, because _I_ got a new one I liked better even though he’s definitely, _absolutely_ , NOT. BETTER.”

The indignant sputter that burst out of Petey was immediate. “ _Yes_ you _did_! That’s like, _exactly_ what you did! Like, EXACTLY!”

“ _What_ are you _talking_ about?”

“Oh come on, the wedding? The _whole_ summer? Where _were_ you? Do I have to say it? Don’t _make_ me say it, Gary, I will! I’ll _say_ it, and you can _’t_ stop me!”

“Give me a _break_! _Poor_ Petey! Were you _lonely_ or something, _little baby_? Why don’t you just run along, back to your _boyfriend_ Jimmy and _suck_ his big, _fat_ -“

With a mighty lurch, Peter surged forward and shoved both hands as hard as he could into Gary’s chest, sending him flying backwards. Tires spun out and there was a terrible screech of rubber on asphalt, and the world filled with the panicked screams of nearby students. Gary had landed in the road, the nearest yellow Ford Fiesta whipped around to the side in an effort to avoid running the teenager over. An angry townie leaned out of the driver’s side window and shouted expletives at them both, before backing the car up and finally pulling off. Petey stared, wide-eyed, at all that had occurred, before turning his shocked stare down to Gary in the street. He was untouched, but his face was lit with an utterly surprised anger.

“Petey! _What_ the _hell_?? WHAT’S your PROBLEM??” 

“HE PROTECTED YOU!”

The words burst past Petey’s lips and physically felt like a punch to the face, rendering Gary completely immobile, and for once, totally silent. Petey had finally snapped. Or, was it more accurate to say that _Gary_ had finally been the one to snap _Petey_?

“Can you even APPRECIATE that?! From _your father_ , he _saved_ you! NOBODY has _ever_ done that for you! It’s…. It’s… _It’s what you’ve always wanted!_ And then you just-?”

It was all bubbling up now, Gary realized. From the ground, his face grew slack and pale.  He propped himself up on his elbows and watched Petey, feeling all the blood drain from his head. He was already lost in the tidal wave of truth he hadn’t seen coming before. It poured out over him now, covering him entirely up. 

Petey screamed himself hoarse, his tanned cheeks flushing pink. “AND YOU THREW HIM OUT LIKE THE TRASH! You IDIOT! You threw away your ONE CHANCE at having a happy family! You are SO STUPID! I can’t BELIEVE what a TOTAL MORON you are! How do you like that, huh? HUH? WHO’S STUPID NOW?!? HOW could you TREAT HIM LIKE THAT??”

The cough and followup fumble to brush a hand across his lips belayed Gary’s losing argument before he said a single word. “Why do _you_ care? What, are you _in love with him_ or something?”

That seemed to tip Petey over the final precipice, and he threw his arms up in total frustration. “NO, Gary!You never _listen_! IT’S ALWAYS BEEN _YOU_!”

They stared at each other for several furious moments, before Gary swallowed once, and quirked his head. “So… does that mean…. that… _I’m_ the one in love with—? Or, are _you_ with, uh… _who_ again? I'm sorry but your _grammatical choices_ are a _little nonsensical_ , and honestly? I expected just a _little more_ from Mr. _know-it-all_ english professor Head Boy.”

Peter leveled Gary with an accusatory look, which only seemed to fuel the situation.

“ _Either_ way, you’re telling me you’re _gay_ , right? _Are_ you gay? I mean, I _assumed_ you were, you know, because of that little _Olympic swimsuit junk obsession_ of yours but, did you just _come out_ in front of all these nice people _for real?_ ”

With a scraped palm, Gary emphatically gestured to the small crowd around them. When he drew his attention to the other students, they slowly started to break up, though Petey suddenly seemed to notice them for the first time, his face flushing a bright pink. Gary seized his embarrassment for one last dig. If everything was a joke, nothing would be true.

“So, is _everyone_ on this campus a _fag_ now, or _what_? Get locked in an asylum for ONE YEAR and _everything changes!_ ”

 

Offering one last disgusted look, mingling gut-wrenchingly with disappointment, Pete smoothed his hand over his scarf and turned to storm down the sidewalk. Gary rose half up his spine to protest before freezing in place. Petey left, knowing Gary couldn’t follow. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. In the grand scheme of the situation, there were several factors to consider. _One_ , Crabblesnitch was a sneeze away from expelling a much larger portion of the student body than Gary had originally thought. There were watching eyes everywhere. _Two_ , the campus was large, but not un-navigably so. The convenience of this was that campus was littered with hidey holes and shortcuts unknown to staff. And perhaps most crucially, point number _three_ , Jimmy Hopkins could only be in a few places.

This time Gary found him exiting the boy’s dorm with a bag slung over his shoulder. His destination was irrelevant, because he would never actually be able to make it there. Gary would break his knees before he could leave.

With a calculated glance to check for danger, Gary stepped out from behind the stairs and grabbed James as he walked by, a fist in his shirt and the other slapped across his mouth as he dragged the other quickly back from the main drag and into the narrow alley behind the dorms. When he was sure they were alone, Gary swung Jimmy around and slammed his back hard into the brick wall, coming in close with pupils dilated with fury. For long seconds Jimmy stared back in shock, his own breath coming heavy, which by this point was more physical training than actual cause from fear. James was seldom afraid. Surprised, _definitely_. But almost never afraid.

Gary let his heart beat in his throat, Jimmy’s familiar scents washing in close after so long apart from him. For a long second he had to let himself adjust to their sudden proximity. Hadn’t he decided something about _n_ _ever thinking about_ , OR TALKING TO, this idiot ever again?? Smith licked his suddenly dry lips, and Jimmy finally snorted into the quiet between them.

“What? Do I talk? Do you talk? _What_?”

And all at once, the sound of his voice clarified Gary’s point again. He snarled and shoved James harder into the brick. “ _You told Petey_. I don’t _remember_ telling you that you had _permission_ to talk about it with _anyone_. I’m pretty sure I _didn’t forget that._ In FACT, I’m pretty sure we _agreed_ to keep it a _secret_ from EVERYONE. You know what I DO remember? Telling you I’d _pour bleach down your throat_ if you told anyone. ESPECIALLY Petey.”

The point reverberated in Gary’s mind, making the slight hurt more, making him press closer. He had to remember the effect Jimmy had on other people. How he _ruined things_. The knowledge would help him now. It would help him to stop feeling anything other than righteous anger.  

 

 

 

**JIMMY  
**

  

Jimmy rolled his eyes exaggeratedly and tipped his head back against the brick. He stared up at the sky and let out a heavy sigh. His exasperation hung in a little cloud above them as he tried to find the right words. Finding them wasn't his strong suit, even at the best of times.

It would have been so much easier to just fight him, part of him still thought. But he didn't want to fight--couldn't fight, really, not here, without getting them both sent to jail--so it was probably a good idea to talk Gary down, but Jimmy didn't have that in him either at the moment. Or _anything_ in him, really, for the last approximately 2 million moments. He'd been living in a haze of low-dose pain medication and low-grade depression for almost a month at this point. Finally he tipped his chin back down and regarded Gary with narrowed eyes.

"You're so full of shit, you know that?"

That earned him another shove, as Gary lifted him off the brick just to slam him back in again. His solid fists pressed hard, dull pains into Jimmy's sternum, sending sparks of life through channels in Jimmy's body that had been dead for weeks. Gary was the human version of the impulse to keep tonguing a cut in your mouth, when the doctor told you to leave it alone, let it heal. Jimmy thought he could feel old wounds begin reopening, blossoming like flowers.

Jimmy curled the pads of his own fingers into the brick wall at his back so as not to reciprocate, fist for fist. If a Prefect walked up, Jimmy needed it to be obvious that this was a one-sided confrontation. And that was obviously leaving out the _other_ things his fingers itched for in this proximity--still, infuriatingly, through all this _bullshit_.

He could see Gary working himself up into another string of violent promises. But the words were forming in Jimmy's mouth now, from somewhere in the back of his skull, somewhere sleeping.

"Pete's _always_ known, you moron. Probably way before either of us even knew. I just decided to confirm it for him because he's our _friend_ and he _deserves to know_. Or he's _my_ friend anyway--apparently _no one_ can figure out their relationship to you."

He felt Gary's fingers twitch in his coat. But Jimmy wasn't about to let him interject. How _dare_ he bring up Pete Kowalski to him.

The last week or so had been almost livable, and it was all because of Pete. Jimmy knew Pete hadn't quite forgiven him, and it would take time to rebuild his trust. But he didn't avoid Jimmy anymore. He let Jimmy watch TV with him. He let Jimmy wait for him outside of class. They'd even played a couple board games. Jimmy was complete garbage at them and barely understood the rules, but he was so glad to be companionable with Pete that he didn't even let his impatience show when he lost for the fifth time in one night.

So the fact that Gary, who had frozen him out _completely_ , had the nerve to come and attack the one semi-functional relationship Jimmy had left in his life? Nah. _Fuck_ that.

"Why the hell do you even care, anyway?" He couldn't help it, he was up off the wall now, leaning forward with his hands clenched around Gary's fists. Flecks of spit flew from his mouth as he spoke.

"We clearly aren't _friends_ anymore, anyway, so it's not like I'm endangering anything. At this point I'm just filling him in on ancient fucking history. You don't really care about Pete. You just want to feel in control--"

Jimmy was interrupted by a high ringing sound coming from deep in his pocket. With a noise of frustration he let go of Gary's hands and shoved his fist deep in his jacket, fishing out the little brick.

When Jimmy read the word on the caller ID, he felt his whole body go cold. It was one of the only numbers he'd programmed into his address book when he first got his phone: four letters surrounded by two bitter, ironic quotation marks. The blood drained from his face, previously flushed from anger and the heat building under his furry earflap hat, and the effect must have been visible enough to shake Gary up because he let go of Jimmy's coat. He let Gary read the word over his shoulder and heard him curse quietly, their duel forgotten momentarily.

His thumb hovered hesitantly over the button before accepting the call from "HOME".

Jimmy hadn't spoken to his mother since the last call. She hadn't called, and he hadn't tried either. There was nothing she could say that he wanted to hear. He couldn't tell where the lines of actual abuse ended and her lies and manipulation began, and he didn't have the energy or the masochism left in him to try and untangle them. His concern for her, which had burned so brightly in that eighteen hour period between phone calls, had run its course. He had withdrawn his love out of self-preservation, held it close to his chest like an arm whose hand had been severed. A hard-won lesson, and not the first time he'd learned it. 

So when her voice, bright and chipper, came tripping down the phone lines, he listened cautiously and said little in return. The phone call lasted a few minutes, during which he turned and rested his forehead on the cold brick. He didn't want to risk even a millisecond of vulnerability on his face in front of Gary. 

When it was over, he tucked the phone back into his pocket and turned back around. He half expected Gary to have gotten bored and wandered off, or to be standing with a broken bottle or a pack of Rottweilers ready to resume their confrontation. But it was just Gary. Waiting for him, pale and grim, his coat drawn close around himself against the chill. Jimmy ached for him, so suddenly and painfully that he had to turn away again. He pretended to rub his temples in exhaustion to hide his face.

"So... they're back."

"Well, I figured _that_ out."

"They want us to come home for dinner. Tonight. In a few hours. Apparently they have an _announcement_."

Gary looked as queasy as Jimmy felt, trying to process that news.

"Did they say what it was? Are they getting a _divorce?"_

"I don't know, Gary--if they'd of told me, I'd be telling you."

Gary drew his bottom lip in between his teeth and began worrying it with narrowed eyes, already back in his head. Jimmy just watched him, and his head swam with desires--to pull Gary back against him on the brick wall; to punch him in the stomach; to grab his hand and begin running and not stop or let go until they were both far, far away. 

Jesus, he had to get away from him, for a few hours at least. He had to calm down again, clear his head. He had to check on Pete, make sure Gary hadn't _done anything_ when he'd heard the good news about Jimmy spilling their secret.

"Alright, I'm going to go clear this with Crabblesnitch--I'll make sure we have a pass to get home or whatever, so we don't get gooned on our way out. This conversation is _not over_ , but is officially on hold until we deal with whatever new horrors await us. Deal?"

 **GARY  
**

   


For once in his life, Gary let someone else end the conversation. It wasn't like Jimmy could exactly _run away_ from this, though from the nauseated look on his blunt face, he was probably very seriously considering it. Instead, all the anger Gary had been recently channeling then piped away, sucked clean out of his body in a cold gust by the mere concept of standing in front of his long absent father.  Him, and of course that wrinkly red-headed basket case responsible for popping out one of the most infuriating people Gary had ever met. Their parents... had _come home_? But... _why_?

In light of the bad news, Smith fell back to a respectable distance from Jimmy, letting him breathe. Gary's expression of anger had faded at first recognition of the caller ID, but now he observed James with something closer to nervous concern. He chewed thoughtlessly on his bottom lip, eyes flickering up and down Jimmy's figure as they both stood in anxious silence. It took a long moment to again recall that now was Gary's turn to speak, and the taller boy let his eyelids flutter as he abruptly redirected his thoughts. Their conversation was being put on hold. 

Gary opened his mouth several times in an attempt to form a nasty retort, but he then closed it again in silence after having second thoughts. His face rippled with static as he played out several scenarios in his mind. Eyes glued to Jimmy's face, Smith finally settled on awkwardly stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking away, his bangs flopping in a mess across his forehead. Annoyed, the taller youth un-pocketed one cold hand to smooth his hair back into place.

"...Fine."

The word was clipped. Curt. Icy, even, though a very distant hint of insecurity laced it's faraway edges. Maybe it was better that they talk later. Any conversation they might have now would only turn to the subject of their parents, and that was a topic even more repulsive to them both than their perpetual argument over who was the traitor and who wasn't. The traitor issue was a familiar argument, but even for Smith, who was so hungry right now for any trace of the familiar, it was known that it would never bring them resolution. It was a circular disagreement, each counterpoint biting the tail of the last.   

Gary flatly pronounced a utilitarian response. "I'll meet you at the front gate in an hour."

It was all that was left over between them for the moment. One more long beat was spent lingering on Jimmy's barely composed demeanor where Gary paused, indecision flickering like a warm spark in his eyes. He _knew_ what this would do to Jimmy, just like he _knew_ Jimmy knew what it would do to him. Should he... _say_... _something_? Some... small... _what, exactly_? Gary's conscience wheedled uncomfortably in his chest, contorting his insides. But he had already made an oath to himself to never go back to his childhood. To never allow those old, sad things to touch him again. And anyway, hadn't they talked about this once already? Wasn't once enough? Gary recalled standing by the edge of the swimming pool, looking at Jimmy's face bathed in drifting green, and swearing to him that he had moved on about their parents. That he simply _no longer cared_. Despite their chilly silence now, they both knew exactly how tenuous that was.

What had he said, then? Gary frowned. _Who cares? It doesn't matter?_ It was harder to recall, now, when the situation had somehow become inexplicably so much worse. But the memory of that night was enough to snap the compassionate look off Gary's face, and he again regarded Hopkins with a neutral cold dislike.

But who actually cared? It _didn't_ matter. That was all Gary could tell himself, at least for the time being. He blinked once, then walked silently back around the building, leaving Jimmy with his phone and his thoughts in the alley, alone.

* * *

 

Upon arriving at the Smith Mansion just after sunset, the boys were dressed for dinner, then stood up like matching trophy displays at the end of the master dining room. Gary had expected to be plagued by memories of his childhood. Things he had long ago decided he would rather forget had a way of finding him when he was in front of his father, and all the conditions of the moment were right for a truly horrible evening. Mr. Smith sat in a burgundy suit at the head of the burnished brass and cherrywood table looking very much the same as always, albeit slightly more weathered, and tonight sporting a light ruddiness from one cocktail too many. But as Gary ran his eyes over his father's handsome salt-and-pepper high fade, over the pouchy bags that perpetually lingered beneath his small, flinty eyes, and at the cruel twisting smirk in the corner of his iron mouth, something different happened. Gary didn't think of the terrors of his youngest years. He thought of Pete Kowalski.

" _Well_ , boys. It looks like your _school reports_ are in, and they have quite a lot to tell your mother and me about your _behavior_ over the past few weeks, during our absence from the country... _Hmmh_... How... _interesting_."

Mr. Smith's voice rumbled pleasure and intimidation in equal parts. He must have read the incident report about their quote unquote "fight". Not surprisingly, the kind of fight which involved a stabbing and a hospital stay looked like it pleased him immensely. Maybe, _just maybe_ , enough to gloss over the wedding? It was an absurd thought. Gary eyed the corner of his father's mouth as he spoke, remembering what it looked like split and bloody. Petey was there, whispering in the back of Gary's mind.

 _'He protected you!'  
_

Kowalski's sincere tone had never truly left Gary's mind since the words were first blurted, returning now to plague the youngest Smith like a relentless ghost. Again and again and again, he heard the words. Gary's jaw locked as he still stalwartly refused to look at Jimmy, though something pressed inside him to do so, _right now._

" _Fighting_ is an offense punishable by _expulsion_ , as I'm sure Principal Crabblesnitch has been more than gracious enough to inform you both of." Mr. Smith smiled at Gary, and in turn frowned at Jimmy, folding his ringed fingers in a masculine lattice neatly on the table. "Nothing... _wrong_... with a little ... _roughhousing_ , boys, now is there? ...From.... _time_ to _time_."

Beneath the cuff of his suit sleeve, Gary dug his tidily trimmed nails into the scabs on his scraped palm. He pressed into them without flinching, dwelling on the only evidence left over from his near brush with death at the unlikely hands of Pete Kowalski. A concept was slowly beginning to dawn on him as Gary listened to a speech from Mr. Smith that ordinarily would have sent chills up his spine.  He worked it around in his brain while trying to keep his face a blank, unassuming neutral. But, Jimmy was... _distracting_. Was he... _mad_? Was he... _sad_? Gary itched to glance over at him, but knew it would be a mistake. Instead, he stared dead ahead at his father, and tried to process.

 _'He protected you! He saved you!'_

  
_'I'm your son too now _dad_ , you gonna beat me too? You gonna beat the shit out of me too? Oh please _daddy, please_ beat me too!_ '

A servant entered through the far left paneled door and came to stand at Mr. Smith's right, a melting cocktail on a small ivory tray at the ready. After a moment he languorously reached backward for it, then set it slowly and pointedly on the table in front of him. For long moments, Mr. Smith considered both boys, very much like a judge considers his critical final decision. His frown took on a sour note.

"There _are_ , however, l _ong term_ consequences for refusing to leave... _childish behavior_... behind. Let's see if you can follow me here, boys. _Inappropriate_ behavior, when allowed to roam _unchecked_ , progresses. It grows to the point of being a _detriment_ to your _mental health_. And _mental health_ issues can only be dealt with by... _specialists_. So. Over the few days and into Christmas, what I would _very much_ wish to see is... a _clarity_ of _behavior_. Behavior which will _not_... _upset_... your mother. Do we have an understanding?"

Gary listened as Jimmy barked a _"yes sir."_ next to him, though nothing about his tone suggested even the smallest bit of fealty. Internally, Smith genuinely smiled at Jimmy's stalwart hatred of the man in front of them, though his face on the outside remained a carefully schooled blank.

The silence stretched on, and Mr. Smith turned his probing, flinty glare on his naturally born son.

"Do _you_ understand?"

Taking the opportunity, Gary examined his father's face. He let each crevice sink deep into his memory, tracing every wrinkle, every iron line. A militaristic hedonist, sadist, materialist, through and through. 

  
_'Will you please leave us, Jimmy.'_ Gary fell into the memory easily now that he was face to face with the man himself again, recalling how his father had descended on him that night in the church like a shadow, twisting his college rings around so they wouldn't leave recognizable marks.

And then Jimmy had been there. In the confusion of that night, he had always lingered in Gary's memory as a burst of white light cutting back through the shadow of that room. A room very much like this one, not in size or wealth, but in darkness, and in promise of bad things to come. Gary blinked once, and finally gave in to a secret smile. Was Mr. Smith _threatening_ them? Didn't he see _the joke?_ In that night? In this? In _everything_?? _All of his efforts_ were _futile_ and _nothing mattered_ because Jimmy was _still here._

 _'From your father, he saved you! NOBODY has ever done that for you! It’s what you’ve always wanted!' _

Mr. Smith frowned in confused consternation at his son's smile, his brow furrowing darkly. Gary's smile widened far enough to flash the gap in his teeth before he swallowed it again, pushing back into modesty. But something glittered in his eyes, and he finally glanced sideways at James, who stood staring at him in slackjaw confusion. Smith huffed at the look, before rounding back on his father.

"I understand."

No doubt assuming that to have a double meaning, Mr. Smith's expression hardened, and he spent long moments glowering at his son in puzzled expectation. Or, most likely more accurately, in anticipation of trouble. But when Gary said nothing else, he at last cast a frustrated hand at them and it was clear they were dismissed. Both boys filed from the dining room in silence, but Gary's smile returned to ghost in a subtle, secret curve as they walked.

It wasn't funny. Not really. It was just that, he hadn't understood exactly what Petey had meant, until this moment. Seeing his father again face to face had finally cemented the point. Gary had simply never considered his father to be a regular human. He had always been monstrous, godlike in his reach and effect. But he _bled_ like _everyone else_ , didn't he? It had just been impossible to appreciate that until he saw Jimmy's fists covered in blood. And as he and Hopkins exited the dining room and filed into the hall, a little trill of laughter bubbled up and out of Gary's chest. Petey had been right. Jimmy _had_ saved Gary. Just, not from a beating.

Once in the hall, Gary stopped short and spent a moment wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to remove the smear of giddiness there. His hand came away damp. (Had he been sweating that whole time?) Smith let his eyes bounce back and forth from the floor to Jimmy's face, digesting what had happened. James stood a few feet away with a doltish expression of consternation on his face that paired really poorly with what had to be the nicest suit Jimmy had ever been allowed to wear. Hand-tailored, Gary guessed. Were they _both_ being accepted back into the fold?

When Jimmy continued to stare, nonplussed, Gary offered an obnoxiously oblivious shrug. " _What..? What_ 's wrong with your face? Why don't you piss off and find something else to stare at, _Homo Erectus_?"

 **JIMMY  
**

  


As soon as they entered the dining room, Jimmy noticed his mother's absence, and the lack of table settings or smell of food in the air. This wasn't a dinner at all. It was a sentencing.

The lack of food was a disappointment, but he was glad his mother wasn't there. Now he only had one set of eyes to avoid.

As the lecture began, Jimmy picked out a small, dull scratch on the table's polished cherrywood surface to stare at. It wasn't large or deep, but it was pretty ugly in contrast with the rest of the table's gleaming veneer. He wondered idly what had made it as his step-father began to speak. Maybe it had gotten there during Mr. Smith's prolonged absence, and he just hadn't noticed it yet. If he was anywhere near as OCD as his son, that had to be the case. 

Jimmy imagined a servant in this tomb-like house all summer, kicking his feet up on the table and watching sports on a rabbit-eared TV while eating a deli sandwich. Not noticing the scratch, left by one of the TV's broken plastic feet, until minutes before the Smiths returned. As his step-father began to speak, Jimmy imagined the servant waiting just outside the door, a cloth and cleaning supplies clutched in his sweaty hands. Praying to God his employer didn't notice it before he had a chance to repair the imperfection.

Jimmy stubbornly hoped it couldn't be repaired. It was the only thing in this house quite as out of place as he was.

Besides, the scratch provided Jimmy a valuable safe-haven. Not looking at his step-father while he spoke to them like this was absolutely necessary. Jimmy had plenty of experience being dressed down, and he knew exactly what to do and what not to do. Which infractions were permissible and which ones would violate his betters' fragile sense of superiority. He concentrated on looking like he was seriously listening, which pulled his face forward into an even more Neanderthal expression. Anything other than serious consideration of his stepfather's words could be interpreted as a slight or betrayal. Which would merit consequences.

 

 

* * *

 

"Be careful, Jimmy. I know I don't have to tell _you_ this, but Mr. Smith is not a very nice man," Pete had said. Jimmy had gone to him right after leaving Gary, to make sure everything was okay. When he found him in the library with Beatrice, Pete had looked completely normal, although maybe a little flushed. Pete hadn't said anything to Jimmy then, just politely asked Beatrice to watch his stuff while he followed Jimmy back out into the cold. Beatrice had craned her long neck over her textbook to watch them go.

Behind the library, Jimmy grilled Pete quickly but thoroughly on what Gary had done to him, even resorting to a kind of awkward pat-down, but Pete insisted that he was fine. He even _apologized_. Typical Pete.

"I'm real sorry, Jimmy. You didn't tell me not to tell anyone but I want you to know I'd never tell anyone anyway, not unless you wanted me to. I didn't even mean to bring it up. It's just... well, you know how he is."

Jimmy snorted. Yeah, yeah he did.

"It was even kind of a scene," Pete said, fidgeting his hands nervously. "There were other kids around... I don't know. I tried to be vague, but he makes it so _darn difficult_. I hope no one around, you know, put two and two together..."

Jimmy clamped both hands on Pete's dejected shoulders, making him jump. He'd looked him in the eyes and smiled as warmly as he could muster.

"Don't even worry about it, Pete. Everything's fine. You know better than anyone how dense everyone is at this school. They were just hoping for blood or hurt feelings, they're all too narcissistic to put anything together. And besides, if something _does_ happen, well... I always handle it, don't I?"

Petey's face grew kind of sad.

"Yeah, Jimmy. You do."

Jimmy let go of him, then, suddenly embarrassed. He leaned his body back against the library wall, his hands buried deep in his ratty jacket pockets. He shrugged.

"Besides... it got him to talk to me. Nothing else has managed to do that so far." He tipped his head toward Pete, and his eyes glinted wryly from beneath the fur lining of his hat. "I ought to be thanking you."

It was Pete's turn to snort then. "Yeah, you're freaking welcome."

They stood next to each other, backs against the library wall, looking out over the campus in silence. Pete had left his scarf inside so he couldn't help but shiver, but Jimmy noticed he was being very stoic about it, and respected him enough not to point it out. Pete must have known Jimmy had more to say, though, because he waited out the long moments before Jimmy could work himself up to speak. Jimmy pushed the words out slowly, to cover any tremor in his voice.

"So, uh. We actually have to go back home tonight. The honeymoon is finally over, I guess. They're back."

Pete whipped his head to look at him, saucer eyes full of concern. Jimmy set his jaw, pretended he didn't notice while Pete searched his face.

"Be careful, Jimmy. I know I don't have to tell _you_ this, but Mr. Smith is... not a very nice man."

Jimmy barked a laugh and rolled his eyes.

"And--don't take this the wrong way--but if something goes bad, well... it's not _you_ I'm worried about."

Jimmy nodded gruffly, and the thought occurred to him for the first time how much Pete really knew about Gary's dad. It was possible he knew aspects of his cruelty that Jimmy hadn't even fathomed. He was Gary's childhood friend, after all. He made a mental note to ask him about that later, and bid his friend goodbye, with a promise that he'd see him tomorrow.

* * *

 

So now, Jimmy _was_ careful. He kept his head down, spoke only when asked--less chance of detectable loathing in his voice that way. He knew he was in the lion's den--he'd known without Pete or Mr. Smith having to say anything directly. His step-father had already made allusions to mental health professionals and his mother's health that were as vague as they were tacky and unnecessary. Jimmy  _got it,_ way before he even walked back through the door. He would have to toe the line, or there would be consequences for the people he cared about.

Jimmy got it... but when Gary took a long pause after being asked if he understood, Jimmy wondered if Gary did.

Chancing a look at Gary's face and seeing him _smiling_ , Jimmy's heart sank to his heels.  _Not now, Gary. Not already._ He looked between father and son with barely-concealed dread, waiting for Gary to finally speak. Jimmy let out a quiet sigh when the taller boy finally seemed to get a hold of himself and answered his father politely. Gary Sr. seemed satisfied, though visibly irritated, and dismissed them from his presence.

In the hall, Jimmy just watched as Gary pulled himself together. The smile still lingered on his face--it seemed ghoulishly out of place to Jimmy, considering the circumstances. A cold anger was beginning to burn in him at Gary's perceived light-heartedness. That Jimmy had taken it on himself to keep Gary out of harm's way when Gary was so _reckless,_ seemed so dead-set on incurring his father's wrath... it suddenly seemed as futile and thankless a project as trying to protect his mother.

So when Gary sneered and told Jimmy to piss off, he didn't fight him. He just shook his head incredulously and started off down the hall, loosening his tie as he went.

 **GARY  
**

 

Even with a family currently filling it, the Smith Mansion was a lonely place. It always _had_ been, Gary thought. As a child, the tall ceilings and fine furniture had felt all the larger and more grandiose, like a huge, dark cavern through which he had relentlessly torn. Gary remembered servants pulling him off the banisters as he slid down them in an endless loop, pleading with him to hold still, to sit quietly, to do his homework. That was a pattern which would repeat throughout his life, but it hadn't been until after Happy Volts that Gary had really been able to see it. To see what a terrible theme satisfying his uncontrollable impulses had grown to become. 

Even with the lights on, the house felt dark. Gary wandered through the halls now, like he had that first night back from the asylum before the wedding. The house wasn't surrounded in fog this time, and he wasn't _alone_ , per se, but it sill held a note of ghostliness that put Gary on edge. He stopped again by the painting of his mother in the upstairs hall, but this time cast a hand out to linger at the edge of the ornate gold frame.

She had always been an incredibly pale woman. Gary, in comparison, was practically flushed. It wasn't hard to imagine the ugly look of dislike she must have given him as pink and screaming baby. She had always been quiet where he had been loud. She had been reserved where he had actively hunted for chaos and trouble. But throughout it all, she had always been pale. Through anger and sadness, always the same chalky white. It was most likely a reflection of her poor health, a long standing issue with her heart that Gary's father said eventually claimed her life. This particular portrait had been from her college years, yet even in her youth, sickness lingered. She had been born into money like his father had, but Gary couldn't remember ever seeing her looking content. About _anything_. Her face even in the panting was ill-at-ease, curtained between thick plaits of straight black hair, somewhere between a smile and a frown. Gary subconsciously mirrored her expression, and touched the small placard at the bottom of the frame. He traced the letters, ' _G e o r g i a'_ ,  and let his hand drop.

They said it had all come from her. Everything. Every tic, every panic attack, every neurosis. Gary's... _problems_. His father had always been cruel, but never _unsound_. Never _illogical_. Gary had already been away at school when his mother had died. It had been in the fall, and he remembered staring out the window for days as the leaves fell while he waited on a summons from his father to bring him home. When it eventually came, she was already in the ground. It didn't take being a _boy genius_ to deduce how bad she must have looked before the burial. How, suddenly, nobody in the house was allowed to use bleach product. How nobody was allowed to discuss the issue with him. For a long time afterward, Gary wondered ceaselessly about what she must have been thinking in those last moments. But he didn't like to think about that anymore.

Gary's bedroom was exactly how he had left it over the summer. The books Jimmy had destroyed still sat in a neat stack by Gary's bed, and he was pleased to also discover the room had been meticulously swept in his absence. He moved further down the hall to the staircase to the attic, and ascended the wooden steps two at a time.

All of Gary's childhood things sat packed in tight boxes by the mansion attic's dusty bay windows. His single size mattress was propped against a stack of bad landscape paintings his mother had pursued as a hobby, and the rest of the room sported dark shadowy figures Gary knew were other pieces of her furniture hidden beneath dust-kissed throw cloths. The room was musty, and looking back at his own footprints on the ground, he knew the room had been neglected for years, if not possibly since the day his mother had actually died. It wasn't anything like the attic in Gary's memory. That attic had been sunnier, cleaner, emptier. A fort to hide in when his parents were mad.  
Gary let himself remember, blinking into the middle distance, before casually pushing through boxes to the windows. With some aggravated effort, he managed to shove open the far left window to the night air. It was brisk out, and dark. Too dark to see the water sparking on the distant horizon. But Gary could smell ocean salt, and closed his eyes to let it kiss the sweat away from his brow.

When Gary opened his eyes again, he saw Jimmy, far below. The redhead shuffled listlessly in the driveway, kicking a rock back and forth across the pavement. Even from this height, it was obvious James had wrung his stupid necktie senseless, and it hung free from his jacket now in a crinkled zigzag. His anxiety was palpable, even from thee stories away. Gary grinned at first, then let the look slide off his face.  He remembered watching Jimmy from this height another time. The day he had been kicked out. The day he had been exiled back to school campus in the back of a cheap yellow cab, his face a purple pulp. Gary thought suddenly that Jimmy had looked _less_ sad on that day. And that was... saying a lot.

Petey's sneaking whisper jabbed again past Gary's ear canal and straight into his brain.

 _'He protected you! And you threw him out like the trash! You idiot!'_

Gary squinted into the dark, a frown furrowing his brow. _  
_

_Maybe_... it was... admittedly... _f_ _inally... time to talk_.

 

* * *

 

As he slid past the sitting room, a flash of red caught Gary's eye, pausing him in his tracks in the hallway. Across from the cozy fireplace, Mrs. Hopkins sat reading a tabloid magazine in an armchair. Her clothes were pointedly less cheap, but no less gaudy. She wore a hot pink dress with a citrus green jacket, the collar lined in mink. It took her a moment, but when she looked up from her magazine, they steadily locked eyes.

  
Strangely, as Gary stared back, he felt suddenly unsure of himself. This woman was _supposed to be_ his new mother after all, wasn't she? Something to replace the pale failure from the painting? And yet, Gary had spent _so much_ of his time by this point already inventing reasons to set Jimmy's mother on fire. He had, admittedly, gotten a little _too_ creative with his machinations in the past. He had planned infect her with diseases, to have her ripped apart by feral dogs. He had even once devised a plan to physically ship her to Bangkok in a refrigerator box. All that anger he knew now, without a doubt, had always been for Jimmy. Mrs. Hopkins certainly wasn't the sharpest crayon, nor did she fit at all (AT ALL) (( _literally in ANY WAY_ )) into the Smith family aesthetic, but Gary might have... maybe... _possibly_... been just a _little_ out of touch in the past over any subject involving a Hopkins. It was his way.   So looking at her now, surrounded by the familiar trappings of his childhood, Gary lingered.

When Gary said nothing, and looked like he _planned on_ saying nothing, his new stepmother huffed once, and pointedly returned to her reading. Smith stood for a long moment, listening to the sound of the fire crackling, before turning away and heading down the hall. 

The first bite of cold shocked down his collar as Gary pushed past the garage door and out into the driveway. When Jimmy looked up from his idiot rock kicking game with a look of surprise, Gary rolled his eyes. It was the wrong thing to do, and Jimmy's face instantly closed to him again with a scowl. The redhead turned away, looking down to continue his game in a stupid mockery of Gary's own behavior over the last few weeks. Gary glared, then looked worried, then glared again, folding his arms tight across his chest to keep himself from systematically cracking his knuckles.

"She's _in_ there, you know." Gary said. His eyeball twitched as the words ' _are you okay?_ ' were mowed down in favor of inflicting hurt instead. He swallowed once, and opted for a more ambiguous followup. Something which might, distantly, be construed of as _maybe_ thoughtful.

"...did you... did you see her yet?"  

 

 **JIMMY  
**

 

 

Jimmy snorted. He placed a patent leather shoe on one of the pebbles he'd been kicking around the driveway and ground it into the dirt.

Had he seen her yet? Everywhere, and nowhere. He knew she was hiding from him, but in his agitation he kept thinking he saw her out of the corner of his eye. At the top of the shadowy staircase, reflected in the ornate mirrors lining the main hall. Crouched, looking at him from between the bannisters. 

He knew the likelier story was that she was cozy in some hidden inner sanctum, with a trashy mystery novel and a bottle of wine she couldn't pronounce the name of. She wouldn't be watching him—she couldn't be _bothered_ to _see_ him. She'd made cheerful noises at him over the phone this afternoon, but he knew her words were perfunctory. She was evidently secure enough in her place in her husband's life again, and so had no need to see her son. It was a cycle he'd lived over and over again. In her eyes Jimmy was back to being a nuisance at worst, and at best... peripheral. 

 

"Yeah, Gary," he finally said mockingly. "I went and found her and gave her a biiiig hug. And she hugged me back, and she told me she'd missed me  _so much_ , and that she didn't care if I'd been caught fucking her new husband's son at her wedding, because I'm _her son_ and she  _loves me."_

He picked up the pebble he'd been worrying and hurled it into the garage door. It made a loud, tinny twang as it bounced off and into the darkness. Somewhere nearby, a dog started to bark. 

He pulled his jacket tighter around himself, the expensive fabric failing to do much against the cold. 

"You know what's really stupid?" he laughed humorlessly. "I wasn't even thinking about my ma, until you asked. I was thinking about this look on your face you had just now, inside. When your dad was reading us the riot act. You were _smiling._ "

"And I don't know what the hell that smile was about, but I was trying to think what it reminded me of. And just now when you came out here, I got it. It was this drawing I saw once in a textbook. A kamikaze pilots, just as he was going down. Smiling. That's what you looked like in there."

Jimmy barely knew what he was saying at this point, but he was buoyed on by the terrible image of Gary's smile transposed onto his face at the asylum, greenish and corpselike. Rigor mortis.

"This probably isn't even necessary to say at this point—I think you've made it pretty clear over the past month where things are between us—but just for the record. This is over. Right?"

He gestured between the two of them feebly before sticking his hands back in his jacket pockets.

"Your dad made it pretty clear just now that he's willing to... unsee what he saw, so long as he doesn't see it again. That if he _did,_ there would be _consequences_."

Gary had been uncharacteristically silent to this point, but still Jimmy argued as if someone was arguing back. Pushing his argument to this—the horrible, logical end.

"He's giving us an out. A chance to undo this. And I—I had a good time, while it lasted. But I'm taking it."

"Like I said—not that there's really anything _to_ end, at this point. But... if you come out here asking me about my mom, pretending to _give_ a shit? ... I can't handle that, Gary. Insults, ignoring me—that I can do. But not this."

 **GARY  
**

 

The world vacuum sealed in around his chilly ears as Gary listened, for once perfectly still and quiet. His face drained of what little flush the night air had given him, lips slack in an uncharacteristically un-manicured blank. Even his fingers, usually flexing with an excess of agitated energy in his harassed pockets, hung now by his sides, lifeless. For someone who so regularly had such a heightened sense of control over his outward appearance, it was the absence of emotion that was more telling than it wasn't.

"... You can _read_?" Gary finally breathed out the incredulous joke at Jimmy's asinine textbook reference, glossing conveniently over all the rest. His voice rose up in a cloud of vapor as he molded his face into something like shocked surprise. But when something wet slicked down his freezing cheek a moment later, he broke face and turned away with a grunt of actual anger. 

Roughly, Gary brought his forearm up to scrape across his face, still turned half into the dark of the yard. When he spoke again, his voice was thicker than usual, though he managed to compose himself enough to control the pitch.

"...Look, _I'm_..."

He struggled with the words, still half speaking them into the pit of his elbow. He coughed once, clearly angry with himself, before irritation finally took over and he wracked angry fingers through his hair and his arms hit his sides in a furious slap. He let the silence stretch out as he stared into the dark of the yard, and to the trees beyond.

The night was quiet. It was too cold for crickets, but not for the moths that plinked in faraway helpless patterns against the hot glass of the garage floodlight. He listened them for a minute, processing.

"...I'm SORRY. Ok?" With an exaggerated twist, Gary finally turned back with a flourish of his hand, forcing his body into a casual pose. "I'm just not any GOOD at this kind of stuff, alright?? _What_ do you _want_ me to say? You want me to _hold your hand_? That's _not_ me. _You know_ that's not me."

"I never _said_ I wanted you to-"

"BECAUSE, _some things_? you just _don't talk about_ , Jimmy-boy." Really rounding his shoulders for a standoff now, Gary fully faced the other boy, taking a dangerous step closer. If he could be angry about this, maybe it would keep him from letting too much of that other cold, sick feeling in. The one that, right now, he would do literally anything to avoid.

"What, did you think any of this has been _easy_ for _me either_?" Gary barked, his voice still shaking even in anger. "I mean, how could I have _ever_ chosen _you_? A _Hopkins_? Your _germs alone_ have already clearly caused me brain damage. Should I go to the family physician to test for brain aomebas? Wait, they would only write me another useless prescription. Whatever I've got, it's _too late._ Messing around with you is _definitely_ proof of that."

Smith scoffed, letting his anger rush over him, protecting him. He tried not to look too directly at Jimmy's face, now more than ever terrified of what he would find there.

"You ruined my _life_! And _now_ your _whore mom_ is currently _inside_ sitting on her _fat keister_ in _my_ house making both of our lives a living hell! Was my daddy _mean_ to you? Did he _scare_ you? And you're worried about a little _smile_? _Boo_ fucking _hoo_. You put me in an _asylum_! I should want to _kill_ you right now! Honestly? I kind of want to!"

Jimmy threw up his arms in frustration, before reigning back a 10 year eyeroll to level Gary with a glare. "What are you talking about, Gary? I never know what the hell you mean!"

Gary took the opportunity to yank sharply on Jimmy's crumpled tie before dancing away, pacing in an angry semicircle. When he stopped again, his brain clearly shorting out, he stuffed his hands back in his pockets and rolled his glare down to the ground. He studied his oxfords, his mind spinning out uncontrollably. 

"I should kill you." Smith muttered, almost to himself. "First you, then Petey."

Hopkins physically balked, then took a menacing step forward of his own. " _What_ was that, psycho? Wanna say that to my _face_?"

"I _don't know_ what you _want_ from me!" Gary's voice rose sharply with his line of vision, his yelling pulling some color back into his face. "Because _I can't take_ chasing you around anymore! I'm tired of it! I'm _tired_ of looking at your _stupid_ bloodstains on all my clothes! It's _disgusting_. Petey hates me, my _father_ hates me, _everyone_ hates me! I can't _stand_ the idea that _you'll_ decide you hate me too, so you _know what_? For _once_ in your idiot life, you're _finally_ right about something. This? You and me?"

Wiggling a finger between the two of them, Gary leaned in closer for emphasis.

  
"It was nothing but a _big mistake_."

 **JIMMY  
**

 

Anger and adrenaline convulsed sickly in Jimmy's chest. The heat in his red face burned against the cold, and he felt light-headed, like he'd just run much too far, much too fast.

Gary'd threatened him, threatened _Pete_ , and every instinct in Jimmy's body told him to lurch forward and strangle him into the garage siding. But he had already resolved out here, earlier when he was kicking rocks and trying to keep himself from disintegrating, that he couldn't let himself touch Gary, in anger or anything else. He knew if he did he wouldn't be able to stop himself from whatever happened next--and either way, jail was the only end.

Fighting or fucking, fighting _and_ fucking... he saw it now with a kind of prophetic clarity. It had always been, and always would be, the same. They were just slightly different expressions of their mutual desire for complete and total annihilation. Sometimes it's easier to completely take yourself apart if you have a friend there to help. Four hands rend more flesh than just two.

So Jimmy just tightened his fists, the sound of chapped skin rubbing against itself, tiny joints and bones popping. He breathed through his nose as deeply as he could, willing his heart to still before it burst.

"I don't fucking get you, Gary," he finally said, quiet and low.

"For a while..." and he had to clear this throat, to get rid of a ragged edge. "For a while, I thought I kind of did. And I thought you kind of got me, too."

Gary still had his face turned half away. He was backlit by the garage floodlight, but Jimmy could faintly see the snail trail of a tear glinting off his clenched jaw.

"But -whatever- it was, it's over now. We don't fuck, we don't fight. Okay? We just--" and a sick giggle bubbled out of him as he mentally finished his sentence. He wracked his hands across his skull and sighed, a humorless smile on his face.

"We just act like one big, happy family."

 **GARY  
**

 

 

"Oh, that's _exactly_ what we are, Jimmy-boy, _exactly_!"

 

How did Gary collect the pieces together again from something he hadn't really realized existed in the first place? What was this quantifiably nightmarish sensation sinking heavily in his gut? If felt like some kind of cast off chunk from the incorrigible iceberg responsible for sinking the Titanic. And yet, somehow, his head felt un-tethered from his body too, like it might fly off and into the static stratosphere at any moment.

Finally, Gary let his gaze really settle on Jimmy, and for a brief minute Smith seriously considered suggesting they commit arson together, right there, in the quiet driveway of his father's palatially haunted mansion. _If only_ both of their parents would vanish, _forever_. Gary thought about that concept, turned it over in his mind, and tried to insert Jimmy into the scenario, but it all shook out to the same endgame; he had never in his life wanted to burn down his childhood home more than he did at this _exact_ moment.

"... _So_." Smith picked up after a silence he thought might fry every strand of his hair. "... it's _over_. Fine, like I _even_ _care_. Good riddance."

He stared daggers across their distance, willing himself not to recoil in abject horror at the words pouring out of his own traitorous mouth. Like they always did. Like they had so many times before, the words hung cruel in the air and masked the true thoughts residing hidden beneath. Despite the cold, sweat began to bead at Gary's brow as he searched Jimmy's face in desperate hope that he might find some notch in the facade to exploit. Some small hole that he could tear open to reveal that all of this was somehow a farce. That it could somehow be un-said, made untrue even after Gary knew there was truly no more hope. But since always, since the day Gary had first slipped like a weasel around the corner of the dormitory to pepper the new kid with insistent questions, James remained steadfast. It was disappointing, Gary thought, as he let his gaze finally linger unchecked. And yet it wasn't. It was one of the reasons he had inexplicably fallen in love. 

  
"And _another_ thing, you _cro magnon_ , ok?" Smith saw his finger move of it's own volition to jab out accusatorily at Jimmy's chest. "You got something _else_ wrong! _Surprise_. You really don't have a _clue_ , do you? About that _smile_ you were so fussy about? About what I was _thinking_?!  I don't even know _why_ I bothered for so long. I can't _believe_ I'm expecting a _Hopkins_ to follow me this far right now, but... You really _don't understand._ "

 _How_ could Jimmy understand? How could he? In what perverse, backwards universe could he see into Gary's thoughts, into the very heart he had worked so long and hard to keep so deeply buried, and understand what Petey had only recently illuminated to an actual genius? How could Gary communicate in simple words that something as simple as standing up for Gary had fundamentally changed the way Gary thought about the world? And about himself? _Everything_ had changed, after that night, even if he hadn't realized it right away. And not just the way Gary viewed his own fucked up family. Everything else was different now too. Every heavy burden had lightened. Every shadow had become a little less dark.

 _He saved you._

  


Gary felt bile rise up on the back of his tongue and he made a pinched expression as he swallowed it back down.

"Do you know what _Petey_ _did_? Do you know what he _said_ to me?? About _you_? Did he tell you _that, too_? Or did you two just _jerk each other off_ while thinking about me? He _said_ -"

The diatribe stopped abruptly, the truth tottering dangerously on the edge of a terrible cliff. Gary glared, and bit down on the tip of his tongue until the pink poked out from beneath the whistle gap in his teeth. All his breath sucked in as he considered pushing the words over the edge, really letting the idea linger. Would it even do any good? Would it do _anything_? In the end, Gary's anger deflated in a singular, exhausting sigh. His body went limp, signalling his personal fold from the conversation. It didn't matter. It would never matter. The fundamental Hopkins principal returned to reiterate itself; steadfast Jimmy never changed his mind. Smith was already dead in the water.

"Nevermind." the teenager sighed, running his fingers up over his neck, and thinking with sudden pining urgency of his lonely bedroom with the locking door.

"You _wouldn't_ _get it anyway_." 

Gary Smith was dead.  Long live Gary Smith.

 **JIMMY  
**

 

 

 _What was he talking about?_

Even now, through the door that Jimmy himself had closed and barricaded, his curiosity stretched toward Gary. This desire--to know and be known--it was new to him, and it always, _only_ related to the boy he saw dimly standing in front of him. Gary, whose soul seemed to open and close to him violently, like an unlatched storm door in a hurricane.

He couldn't help himself.

"Gary, what are you--"

Jimmy was cut off by the sound of laughter. Somewhere, around the side of the house maybe, someone must have opened a window because they suddenly heard Jimmy's mother laughing. It was high-pitched, almost shrieking--drunken, forced, _phony_ laughter, Jimmy thought. It was an ancient sound, to Jimmy--the sound of his mother _entertaining--_ and it echoed around the caverns of his child skull. 

Jimmy flinched back from Gary, his eyes searching blindly in the shadows outside the illuminated circle of the floodlights. His soul, which had been creeping out again to touch tentatively at the edge of Gary's hem, crawled back up into his throat, and he blinked away a treacherous sensation.

He had to be strong.

"I'm, uh. I need to clear my head. If they ask, tell them not to wait up."

Now he was the one who couldn't look Gary in the eye. Slowly he backed out of the floodlight, leaving Gary alone in its illumination.

 

* * *

 

 

It was a dark, clear night, and the stars were out in full force as Jimmy walked down through the Vale. As he walked, he kept his head craned all the way back, so that his full field of vision was the night sky. The stars held a certain comfort for Jimmy. They were ancient, and constant. All of their relationships were fixed in space--never changing, never growing closer or further apart. People had been looking at stars since people were monkeys, making up stories about them and trying to extract from them some meaning for their lives. Jimmy didn't look at them like that--forcing meaning onto the meaningless was a kind of abuse, in his opinion--but he liked them all the same. And walking that way, with his head tipped back, he felt untethered from the earth-- abstracted from all his problems. Until he tripped, anyway, which he inevitably did.

He stuck to shadow paths and back ways--any route where he could be reasonably sure he wouldn't run into another human being. He was passed a few times by bike racers who whooshed past screaming insults at him for almost having hit them. No one recognized him, thankfully.

He didn't have a watch on him, but he figured he'd been gone about two hours before the cold and his rumbling stomach (they never had had any _fucking dinner_ ) made him trudge back up the mansion's long drive.

A quick shakedown of the kitchen revealed enough sliced meats, cheese and crackers ( _why don't rich people eat FOOD_ ) to create an approximation of a meal, which he scarfed greedily while standing at the counter. As he chewed, he felt feeling slowly start to return to his extremities. It was a good twenty minutes before his fingers and toes stopped burning. Too much longer out there and he might have had a problem, he thought distantly.

He crept through the hallways looking for a room with an open door that looked empty and reasonably prepared for him. Not seeing anything on the bottom floor, he moved to go up the staircase, but was stopped again by his mother's voice.

"JIMMY!!! Come in here! You aren't going to say hi to your mother??"

Jimmy froze on the stairs. He strongly considered continuing to trudge up them, but decided not to fight her now. The path of least resistance was probably the quickest to rest.

When he entered the drawing room, he saw his mother sitting curled on his step-father's lap as he sprawled across a leather armchair. They looked almost posed there, like they'd chosen the scene most determined to turn Jimmy's stomach. Jimmy's step-father was still in his evening suit, but his tie was pulled loose and his mother was playing with the fabric, twirling the silk around her manicured finger. Her wine glass was on the table beside them, and he held a tumbler of whiskey in his hand. The reflection of the flickering fireplace glinted in their watery eyes. They were both shit-faced.

Jimmy stood as straight as he could despite a sudden wave of exhaustion, and tried so hard to sound normal.

"Hey, ma. Welcome back."

"Welcome back? Don't sound so formal. Didn't you miss me at all?"

Jimmy smiled a brittle smile. "Course I did, ma."

"Well then don't just stand there you big idiot, come over here and give your momma a kiss."

Robotically, Jimmy willed himself closer to the tangle of limbs that were supposed to be his parents. He couldn't help but feel that this was some sort of trap. As he leaned across his step-father to peck his mother on the cheek, he could feel his eyes watching him from below, like a snake coiled to strike.

But nothing happened--nothing except a light alcohol fume headache from being in their proximity, anyway--and Jimmy moved back across the room as quickly as he could without making it obvious that that's what he was doing.

"I'm real tired, ma, so if it's okay I'm gonna hit the sack."

"Of course, James. Your room is at the top of the stairs on the left... NOT on the right! Okay? That's _Gary's_ room. Don't get them mixed up~."

He couldn't help but visibly flinch--he  _still_ wasn't sure what all she knew--and he caught his step-father do the same. The thick, ring-covered fingers clenched briefly around his mother's thigh before he too forced himself to relax. "Ouch, what was that for??" she cried, and slapped his face playfully with his tie. Jimmy forced himself to look away from the red marks left by his step-father's fingernails.

"On the left, right. Thanks ma. Well, if that's all..."

"OH, one more thing, James. We've decided to throw a Christmas party! Isn't that exciting?"

"A... party?"

"Yes, and we're going to invite simply everyone in town. Well," and she paused, exchanging a sly grin with Gary's father, "anyone who's _anyone,_ of course." _Of course._

"We're going to decorate the whole house, and we'll order you boys some new clothes, and we're going to show everyone in town what a happy family we all are!"

She giggled as she spoke, and Jimmy's heart sank to see that she meant what she said. Of _course_ they were throwing a party as soon as they got back. This would be the party that fixed the wedding, and repaired their reputation in town. The worst part was that she looked genuinely happy--at the idea of elevated social status, sure, but also at the idea of having a _family_. It was times like these he remembered Grandpa, and the fragments of her childhood Jimmy'd been able to pry out of her over the years. From what Jimmy knew, she hadn't had any family to speak of either.

"That sounds great, ma," Jimmy said, through gritted teeth. He wasn't thrilled at the idea of having to make nice with the three of them in front of people, and he was slightly terrified to think of what Gary would do, but for his part Jimmy would do what he had to to survive. To ensure they _both_ survived.

"Well, I'm pooped," Jimmy said quickly. "Goodnight ma, goodnight... sir," he said, waving instead of looking in their direction while exiting the warm, fire-lit room. As he trudged up the stairs he felt the heat leaving him in a

* * *

 

The next thing Jimmy knew, he was standing outside a door at the top of the stairs. He could still feel his mother's laughter still rippling in his guts.

This door was on the right.

He let his forehead fall slowly, silently, to rest against the its surface. It was a good door. Paneled oak. Thick, heavy, and old. His hand hovered in the air just above the doorknob, and he pushed his mother's voice out of his head and listened fully for any sound coming from inside. Anything--a quiet voice calling, or the sheets rustling as a body turned over in bed. But the door was too thick, or the room was still empty, or the sound of his heart beating in his ears was too loud and drowned everything, everything out.

So he turned, walked across the hall, and entered his own silent, empty room.


	9. Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night of the Smith Family Christmas Eve soiree finally arrives. Jimmy and Gary confront one another amidst guests and family.

 

 

**GARY  
**

 

Night passed for Gary Smith as if he were ensconced in a tomb.

 

For years after, Gary would look back and remember that night. It would summon sweat and heat from deep within him, making him terrified, in the kind of nauseating completeness that shoved people off the edges of buildings. The concept of terror at his own silent bedroom seemed, in retrospect, incalculably stupid. What was an empty room? What threat did the quiet hold? Gary hadn't passed the night in the asylum, after all. Every aspect of the situation could have been much worse. He hadn't even been locked away in his private single occupancy dorm room in Harrington House, left to line all his pens up meticulously on his desk, then fold and re-fold all of his school clothes. He had merely been at home, lying in his very own quiet bed, around the familiar trappings of his childhood. But as much as he had been there, he hadn't been there either. He had been adrift, alone somewhere in the water seen in a glint from the attic on the distant horizon. He had never really, _actually_ , understood what isolation meant until he had been taught the comparison by one very particular red-headed idiot. But now that he had, he fully realized, he had never been so alone in his entire life.

 

By the time the first fingers of pink stretched across the dawn sky, Gary was already popping the cap off the bleach bottle with a dull clack. 

 

How many ladders did he have to climb before people stopped throwing him back down on the ground again? The thought numbed Gary's young mind as he poured the liquid in a steady stream behind him, walking in the pre-dawn light through the house. Nothing was real to him at the moment, except the immediacy of his task. Except the wet sensation of bleach back-splashing across the legs of his slacks. It had been a complete bitch to find the bleach in the first place, though a sleepless night of hunting had eventually paid off. And now that he finally had it, he handled the bottle with great care. As what amounted to essentially Smith household contraband, Gary had really been forced to dig in order to find it in the first place. His father had forbidden the substance and it's general uses anywhere on the Smith family grounds ever since Gary's mother had most likely shuffled off this mortal coil by downing a quart of it and melting her intestines in the process. But if Gary knew anything about this house, it was that hypocrisy was king. It ruled above all else. Mr. Smith had banned the use of bleach, but not his demand for fresh white sheets.

 

Gary moved as if entirely dead, the harsh substance burning a white track in the mansion's many oriental carpets as he traversed the grounds. He took the stairs two at a time, stopping every so often to slosh a healthy splash out behind him. By the time he had arrived at the top of the second floor by the balustrade, the bottle was finally empty. He shook it once more to listen for any remainder sloshing in the bottom of the jug, but the gesture produced nothing. Smith grunted, before tossing it back down the stairs, discarding trash. He watched it bounce off in the dark, thinking only once of his mother's portrait. A temporary grope in his pocket produced a pack of matches, and Gary regarded them dully for a moment. The bright white card glowed in the dark flush of the center of his palm.  

 

 

The first match burst to life, spilling yellow light across Gary's considering face. 

 

 

 

 

**PETEY  
**

 

 

It wasn't that he hated Christmas. The Kowalski family had always made the most out of the holiday, and for as long as he could remember, Petey had looked fondly towards that cozy, quiet night at home with his parents. Mr. Kowalski was an accountant, and normally spent long hours sitting at the kitchen table squinting through his coke bottle lenses at piles of paperwork. The shine off his bald spot had a way of catching the kitchen lights that always made Mrs. Kowalski laugh. She was a retired professor, and a casual botanist, and a classic books collector. And like any intellectual with free time, she usually spent her energy filling her schedule with a dozen different pursuits. Christmas was really the only time that any of the Kowalski's pulled their noses up from the grindstone long enough to look around. It was traditionally a time of comfortable reflection, and Petey had until very recently been waiting with anticipation for the holiday to arrive. But now, he felt differently about it. This year would be totally different, and it was incredibly difficult not to be resentful.

 

This year, the Smiths were throwing a Christmas eve party.

 

Pete angrily re-wrapped his scarf around his neck as he stomped down the brick path past the gym. He hadn't really, _actually_ stopped being angry over the last few days, after he had shoved Gary unceremoniously into moving traffic. His anger had lingered like a burnt smell, singing his edges and giving him a foul attitude. It was a dramatically noticeable change for someone generally so meek and soft spoken, and several of the more outspoken nerds had gone out of their way to let Petey know how totally weird it was. The only possible benefit seemed to be the way Beatrice was now regarding him. She seemed to like Petey's bluster. She seemed into the sharp flush of his face when he was thinking about annoying things, and more than once Petey caught her staring at him, before rolling her eyes down to scribble something contemplative in her notebook.

 

Taking a sharp right at the compass, Kowalski now stalked up the path towards the library. Beatrice was lucky, because Petey was having a hard time imagining a version of himself that wasn't mad anymore. This week had made everything worse, and Pete hadn't even thought that was possible. Logically, there could only be one cause.  As reliably at the setting sun, everything was worse because of _Gary Smith_.

 

 

Petey knew, of course, that his two best friends had gone to the Smith mansion. He had already been anxiously awaiting their return before either of them had even left campus. But when he spotted Gary asleep on a desk in the back of the empty geography classroom the next day, he knew right away how truly bad things must have gone. He spotted Gary a few days later drifting up the walk to Harrington House, his face gray-tinged and expressionless. His left arm was in a sling, naked fingers dangling limply against his ribs in the cold. Later that evening, Petey had found him sleeping in the library, his navy pea coat pulled high up around his ears as he slumped in his favorite chair by the chess boards. The furious crux of it all was that for the first time, possibly in his entire life, Gary wasn't actively causing anyone harm. But there was surprisingly little satisfaction in that. It was actually, confusingly much less relieving than Petey had anticipated.

 

Petey watched Gary with consternation as he walked past a student overladen with textbooks, _so easily_ shoved down the stairs. Petey watched Gary let Darby Harrington ceaselessly talk in the cafeteria, his scar stark against his chalky complexion as he sat in silence. And he watched him sleep. Again and again, Petey found Gary quietly nodding in the backs of classrooms, in the Harrington greenhouse, out in the bleak white afternoon by the football field, on a bench, beneath the apple tree by the gym. But Gary Smith _didn't sleep_. Not in front of _anybody_. Not anywhere,

 

 

where anything could happen. Petey wasn't even entirely sure he had actually _seen_ Gary sleeping before, even once in his entire life, during childhood or otherwise. Gary had always seemed more like some sleepless preternatural night creature, stalking around with more sinister plans to formulate than recharging his body for another day. Now, Gary appeared to not be able to stop. It filled Petey with a sense of revulsion, and then frustration, and finally, sadness. 

 

It was easy to think on the reason why Petey had never wished to visit his friend at the asylum. He hadn't wanted to bear witness to his proud friend's terrible fate. It seemed unbelievably cruel to put someone like Gary in a place so small, so aggressively ignorant of his needs, unknowing of all the heinous ways he thought about things.  But this new version of the youngest Smith was, undeniably, something far worse than watching that incarceration take place. Pete liked to believe that Gary would have at the very least, sucked some modicum of enjoyment out of terrorizing the medical staff. But the spark had gone out of him now. It had died somewhere along the line, and Petey couldn't control the resentment that sprung from that. He wanted to scream at Gary until a vein burst. He wanted Gary to understand what _consequences_ were. _But_ , some dark thing whispered, Petey _also_ wanted Gary to fight.  To scheme insidious plots again like he always had, and to offer snide advice from behind a confident hand. He wanted to be a part of that, whatever form it took. He wanted... He wanted.... Gary to be _alive_. But a Smith with nothing to say might as well be dead.

 

The last straw for Petey came in the form of his other best friend. Pete was on his way to the dorm when he passed Jimmy's broad shoulders, standing out by the basketball court wall. The initial shock of seeing him sprung Pete to action and he jerked forward, his hand going out as a happy smile lit his face for the first time in days. But a few more steps closed his mouth again when the bench beneath the wall was occupied, of course, by a sleeping Gary Smith. Petey froze, suddenly afraid.

 

Jimmy was examining the sleeping teenager with a level of intensity Petey was unfamiliar with seeing on him. His eyes noticeably hovered over Gary's arm, still in a sling, as it rested against his gently rising and falling chest. Gary looked exhausted, his face wan and waxy again in a way Petey hadn't seen on him since he had fallen out of a tree as a little boy and bled buckets all over the lawn. He was deep asleep.

 

"Is that _Smith_?"

 

Kirby Olsen's voice cut sharply across Petey and he physically jerked,suddenly terrified to be seen and turning to bolt past the approaching figure as he appeared from nowhere. Kirby let Pete brush past without a thought or a glance, his own interest pulling him closer to Jimmy.

 

"I want the court, Hopkins! Is he dead, or what?"

 

If Jimmy saw his friend hightailing it as fast as he could back into the dormitory, he didn't acknowledge it. Petey only heard a thoughtful pause, and then a toneless note before he shouldered inside.

 

"Yeah, maybe."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Petey found Gary exactly where he expected him to be. Like the other day, like so many other days recently, Smith was in the library. He dozed in his second floor armchair with his arms folded stiffly across his chest, medical blue sling sitting on top. The navy blue hue of his wool coat sucked any and all remaining color out of his face, acting as a ring of shadow circling him and sucking him into the hue of the chair. His feet were propped up on the chess board, the pieces now littering the ground.

 

Throwing his bag down, Petey smacked Gary's legs off the table in a singularly rough shove. The sleeping teenager jerked awake, then instantly groaned when he tried to whip his left arm out for support and failed.

 

"You are _so pathetic_ right now!" Kowalski's lead-in was blurted comedically loud. "I'm like, _really embarrassed_ to look at you!"

 

Gary looked up as Petey hovered over him, a faraway quality to his eyes. "What?"

 

"You're so _SAD_ , Gary! You! You, _you_ , you're like this... big, dumb.... _sad_... _thing_! I don't get it! It's... It's _too weird_ , ok? Its not YOU."

 

Smith's eyes skated back and forth in confusion. "I'm ... _sorry_?"

 

"...What did you just say?" Incredulity rolled Petey's shoulders, made him stare wide-eyed briefly at everything else in the room that wasn't Gary. " _You_? YOU'RE sorry? You're _sorry_?? When have you ever, like, I mean, _actually_ been sorry before? Like ever? In your _entire_ life?"

 

The sitting teenager's face contorted into a hard frown. "Spit it out, _femmeboy_. You just wanna scream _love confessions_ at me or you wanna _get_ to the _point_?"

 

"Stop doing this!"

 

"Doing _what_?"

 

" _That_!" Kowalski jabbed a finger in Gary's general area, his nose flaring with hot air. Gary's frown grew liquid dark, smoky anger tinting his voice.

 

"Have you been eating your _mommy's special pills_ again, _little Petey_?"

 

"What happened to your arm?"

 

"Maybe someone _else_ pushed me into traffic." Smith lifted a dark eyebrow.

 

Petey laughed once, the sound airy and hysterical and crackled with the last remnants of puberty.

 

"Yeah _right_ , Gary. Even though you would _t-totally_ _deserve_ it, you're like, _way_ too crazy to let two people do the same thing to you. Or, at least you _were_ , before you turned into this... _weird sad dumb_ thing! Was it your dad? What? My dad told me your dad's buying like, _fifteen_ new oriental rugs."

 

Gary considered the question, sucking on his tongue. "....Bleach isn't flammable."

 

There was a confused silence. Petey searched Gary's face for some extra cue, some hint to advertise the statement as a joke. When nothing came, he shook his head instead.

 

"Huh? B-bleach? Like... like, for laundry?"

 

"Hmm! My dad gave me a _chemistry_ lesson! _I_ carried out a couple of _controlled experiments_ , and _he_ _corrected_ my _mistakes_."

 

Pinging everything into place, Petey's eyes suddenly widened as the concept hit home. "That's like seventy five thousand dollars in damage! Holy _shit_ , Gary, you're _crazy_! You're going to get thrown back in the _asylum_! You can't use bleach like, like, like it's _gasoline_ or something!"

 

"Tried!" a dry grin briefly pulled at the corner of Gary's mouth before dying. " _Failed_."

 

"You're like, _totally lucky_ you aren't in prison right now. I seriously can't believe you."  Pete's eyebrows drew together, hurt and concern mingling confusingly.

 

"I should have _looked it up_ first." the sitting boy mumbled.

 

Pete's confused feelings multiplied exponentially when Gary looked away, something haunted, and very slightly afraid, touching him around the eyes. He didn't say anything else, and eventually Petey folded his arms with a frustrated sigh. 

 

"What is this, Gary? Like, a death wish? Or... whatever? What _happened_ to you?"

 

Gary's eyes drifted to the ground, still littered with chess pieces. He let his gaze settle there, but his sight was distant, lost behind some faraway horizon. He shrugged once and the little jerk was almost desperate, a hopeless empty thing.

 

"She's gone." he sighed.

 

It took Petey a few seconds of blinking to understand that Gary was talking about his mother. A few seconds after that were bent to dealing with the shock of it. Gary had never, _ever_ , in the history of their friendship, _ever_ discussed his mother's death. With those little words, Petey was finally given the first little glimpse into the inside of his friend's mind that he had seen in years. His anger died awkwardly, making his face screw up into a jumble of confusing frowns and glares, seizure-like in it's rapid cycling. Eventually he shook his head to clear it, before a final insane idea struck him. Petey frowned like he smelled something foul, before hesitantly reaching out a hand and settling it on Gary's shoulder.

 

"... _Yeah_... She's gone." he said, not unkindly.

 

Gary let Petey's hand rest. They shared the silence.

 

 

* * *

 

  
For Pete Kowalski, the Smith Christmas party had taken the concept of anxiety and elevated it to the level of horror. He mingled in the thick crowd of Bullworth Vale's richest whose whos gathered now in the Smith family drawing room, a truly gargantuan Christmas tree glittering merrily in the corner. The room was dark enough to accentuate the holiday glow from the various baubles and lights strung festively around the room, and if Petey wasn't anticipating the imminent incarceration of one, if not both of his best friends, he might have enjoyed the cheery festivities. However, as things stood, he was more worried about where he could hide when the police came and smashed in the double doors. If Gary had raised his crime level from juvenile graffiti with a side of snark to actual arson with the possible intent of patricide, it felt like anything else could be possible. Had Gary rigged up buckets of blood to dump on unsuspecting party-goers? Had he planted a bomb in the Christmas tree? And would his inevitable crash with Jimmy at some point over the evening be the trigger to set it all off?

 

He found Gary in a clump of preps by the punch bowl. As usual, Derby ignored Petey's presence as if he was merely a fly on the wall. 

 

"Who knew that _buffoon_ could cost _so much money_? You'll have to have the whole staircase replaced!" Harrington announced imperiously, slinging his champagne glass in a fussy circle as he glared at Jimmy, who was buried in the crowd halfway across the room. Gary followed his line of sight with a dead expression.

 

"I mean, honestly, _all_ the carpets? Your father should put that ruffian _away_! Hopkins never DID have any cultural sense, but now he's sunk to destroying property worth more than his college education?"

 

The circle collectively giggled and Gary's eyes flicked back to Derby, who shrugged and rubbed a laughter tear from his eye.

 

"Oh! Oh, no, I'm _sorry_ , I _forgot_. Hopkins is _too stupid_ for a college education." 

 

"Right." The reply deadpanned. "See you later."

 

Smith shouldered past Biff without a second glance, though the gaggle of preps stared after him and his abrupt exit from the circle in vague confusion.

 

"Chad, I say," Derby chimed suddenly with a subtle curiosity. "Go over to Hopkins and knock that _whole glass_ of wine that fellow has there _all over_ his shirt."

 

Mid-exit, Gary froze, before performing a slow turn on one shiny oxford. In the corner, forgotten behind the punch bowl, Petey watched what might almost be a twinkle return to his eye.

 

Smith slid back into the circle and came in close to Chad. Close enough to make the taller prep frown and stare down his nose at him in confusion as the loitering chatter died away.

 

"Do you know how much the _carpet_ in this _house_ _costs_?" Gary asked menacingly. " _More_ than _your_ college education. _Don't_ , touch, _Jimmy_. This is a _party_. Have some _other_ kind of fun that _doesn't_ involve costing _thousands_ of _dollars_ to fix."

 

"Alright, old boy, as you say." Chad nodded once, eyes still glued in wonder to Gary's face. One more once-over ended the interaction with a classic Smith snarl, and he turned again to leave. He didn't see Derby's calculating gaze as it bounced between Gary, Chad, and finally Jimmy Hopkins, still halfway across the room.

 

Petey watched Gary's expression die again as he skittered out from behind the punch to catch up with his friend. Gary was dressed to the nines tonight, if still sporting a sprained elbow allowed for that sort of thing. He had shed the arm sling, but he still protectively cradled his arm, his white sleeves half hidden beneath the jacket he had laid over his shoulders as if it were a cape. His misery face was still anemically pale, which lent him an unknowingly vampirish sense of drama that Petey thought was absurd, and way too melodramatic. He followed Gary across the room to where he slumped down into a chair by the window, his whole body going slack.

 

"Go away, Petey." He sighed once, feeling the boy's presence still at his side.

 

"I'll go away when you stop looking like you're gonna start passing out lumps of coal to everybody."

 

"I'm not going to _do_ _anything_. I'm going to sit in this chair. _Satisfied_?"

 

"Are you going ta talk to Jimmy?"  Better to know now, after all. If Petey could predict the carnage, he could better formulate a game plan.  Gary's hand came up to yank at the sluggish skin across his face.

 

"No." The word was muffled behind his palm, even in it's brevity sounding exhausted.

 

Petey chewed on the idea, turning towards his friend over his tiny teacup of punch. "Why not?"

 

"I _don't know_ , Petey, he doesn't _want_ to!" Smith's uninjured hand flew agitated through the air to dismiss the entire concept. "Or, _I_ don't want to! Or... _something_. Leave me alone. I'm trying to remember _Crime And Punishment_ word-for-word so I can go someplace _nice_ and _peaceful_ , instead of being _here_ in _this_ shit hole with all of _you_ morons." 

 

Instead of the words causing hurt, Petey briefly smiled down into his drink. Something had cracked after their fight in the library, Kowalski had been pleased to discover, even if nothing else about this shit storm of a situation was good. Gary was still cruel, still withholding, but now when he talked to Petey, he let the tiniest modicum of his true feelings peek out from just underneath. Maybe it was the quiet they had spent together, his hand on Gary's shoulder, as they considered all the losses of their earlier years. Or maybe it was that Petey hadn't said anything at the exact moment he was supposed to, and said the right things at the right time too.  Either way, it was some consolation to know that Gary's spirit hadn't entirely died. He was still in there, the rich and complete static swirl of every bad and (surprisingly,) good thing that made him, _him_. He was just tired.

 

Pete cast a sideways glance at his friend, taking in the way Gary's eyes were closing from where his skull had settled on the back of the chair.

 

Ok, like, _really_ tired. Emotionally, or... whatever.

 

"Fine." Petey eventually conceded, and left Gary to drift in the quiet corner.

 

Petey found Jimmy talking to a pretty blonde girl with curls by the far side of the Christmas tree, a tall glass of champagne in his hand. From his current vantage point, he could see not only his parents by the pocket door bookshelf laden with Mr. Smith's miniature brass samurai armor bookends, but also Gary, apparently enjoying his full-body lounge in the high backed chair by the window. He wasn't yet asleep, Petey noticed. He was jiggling his ankle just slightly, probably currently constructing some happy fantasy about murder in soviet Russia.  

 

The blonde regarded Petey with a judgmental snort, before turning to trounce off towards Pinky, who stood mingling with her parents by the cheese board. Bringing his punch up to his lips, Pete sipped on his drink and smiled at Jimmy with a look that was half an apology. Jim didn't really deserve any of this either.

 

"Hey Pete." Jimmy grumbled the greeting.

 

"He's like... _dying_ , or something." Kowalski rolled his eyes at Gary. "He's totally miserable."

 

They regarded Gary together for a minute, letting the noise of the party surround them. Petey felt it more than saw it when Jimmy stiffly folded his arms, creating yet another barrier to separate them. Gary's misery was palpably observable. Petey didn't even _need_ to look at Smith to know exactly how true that was. An unexpected wellspring of compassion for Gary suddenly then rose up, filling his eyes with gentleness.

 

"This is _so_ dumb, Jimmy." Pete muttered, his voice lowering, letting his eyes finally track away from his distant friend. "It's really, really dumb. _You're_ miserable _too_. He's throwing a _huge_ tantrum. He fell asleep in the library like _fifteen times_ this week."

 

What would it cost Petey to admit the next part? Jimmy's silence invited him to continue and he sighed, bending his head briefly to scratch it.

 

"I mean, you get that, right? About what it means? Gary is.... he's like... he's like, _completely_ in love with you. It's _so_ pathetic. I feel kinda bad for him. You know? If you guys are done, or, you know, _whatever_ , you should probably just like, ship him to Russia in a box and leave him there or something. Or shoot him, I don't know. Either, or. It's gotta be better than this."

 

With a sigh, the punch cup came up again, and again Petey smiled. "Everything is terrible."

 

He considered the words, letting them stew, before looking up at Jimmy directly again.

 

"Who was that girl?"

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

  

"Who?"

 

Jimmy blinked, peeling his eyes off of the bouncing ankle, drawing his attention back from the edge of that black hole. _He's like,_ completely _in love with you._

 

"That girl, you know. Little Miss Sunshine." Pete must be on his second cup by now, Jimmy thought, because he was getting a little punchy.

 

Jimmy looked in the direction Pete was indicating with incredulous eyebrows. His eyes caught on blonde curls, flashing like tinsel on the Christmas tree, and he vaguely remembered the fifteen or so minutes of flirtatious, empty conversation he'd just had with her. He struggled to remember her name.

 

"Cindy? Sheri? Something like that. She's Pinky's... cousin, I think. European, or goes to school there, or something."

 

Petey looked at him in exasperation or annoyance, taking a long sip of punch.

 

"What?" Jimmy said defensively. Pete just shook his head, his eyebrows drawn.

 

Blondie and Pinky were having a whispered conversation. Every few seconds one of them would look over at Jimmy and Petey, though they tried not to do it too obviously. Blondie looked like the cat who ate the canary, but Pinky looked _pissed._

 

"Wonder what _that's_ about," Pete mused, his upper lip thoughtlessly tracing the rim of the cup. Jimmy just grunted and shrugged.

 

Their conversation evidently over, Blondie glided off toward another area of the room, where Derby and Biff were currently menacing. Jimmy's eyes stayed on Pinky who, after a quick look around, picked a large wedge of cheddar off the cheese plate with her fingers and stuffed it into her mouth. She looked miserable. Jimmy was already walking towards her when he caught himself. Stepping back into place beside Pete, he grabbed his still full glass of champagne off a side table and tipped it back, downing it in one go before re-crossing his arms. Pete just looked at him quizzically.

 

"I'm done saving people," Jimmy muttered, almost sheepishly, as if answering a question Petey hadn't asked. 

 

* * *

 

 

For the next hour or half an hour or five minutes--Jimmy couldn't tell, party time moved so much differently than regular time--James Smith floated around the edges of the party and tried to look feasibly like he belonged.

 

No matter where he was in the room, he felt eyes on him. He knew he was being evaluated. Not just by his step-father, but by his social circle--the valuable, contributing members of the town. Everyone at the Christmas party had been at the wedding, almost to a one, and there was a thrill of excitement as they gossiped and wondered if Jimmy would put on a show for them again.

 

It made Jimmy feel physically ill. Performing for them this way went against everything in his nature, and with a pang he tried not to think about how a younger Jimmy would be disgusted with how he behaved now. But he gritted his teeth and smiled through it. He had decided to live, after all, and if this is what it took to make it out of here alive, then so be it.

 

He was alright with the women. Jimmy knew he wasn't pretty, his features were far too blunt and pedestrian for this gene pool, but he was a natural flirt, and he knew what women liked. He entered circles of chattering socialites with two flutes of champagne in each hand and left with none, having pushed them into soft, perfumed fingers. Humor and self-deprecation were his friends, here, and the sooner he could acknowledge his infinitely lesser status in joke form, the faster the tension was dispelled. A few times he felt his biceps groped through his tuxedo jacket by manicured hands, which was always his signal to make a quick and graceful exit.

 

The men were much tougher. Most of the men in the room were probably on their fourth or fifth wife by now, and with step-kids of their own they were busy ignoring, so they felt the shock waves of Jimmy's fight with Gary Sr. in a deeper, more personal manner. No doubt they saw in Jimmy's face the face of one of their step-sons, or perhaps a bastard son left to rot in a trailer park, festering with filial contempt. Every once in a while, a businessman red-faced with brandy would seek him out and shake his hand with a grip that was far too tight. Jimmy felt like an old strength tester machine, and he dispensed their prizes in the form of deference and polite comments on their strength. 

 

His feet were hurting from stupid fancy shoes, and he felt like he'd tread every inch of the room at least four times--except for that one dark corner near the window. Despite Pete's best attempts to get him over there, subtle tugs at his elbow and gentle herding, Jimmy was steadfast in his resolve to keep his distance. As the night went on and everyone (Pete included) got tipsier, his sighs got more dramatic, until finally he disappeared into the crowd. Jimmy instantly felt better to have him gone, then felt guilty for feeling that way.

 

Pete meant well, but he just didn't get it. Which wasn't his fault, obviously, but now was neither the time nor the place to explain. Jimmy had decided to _survive_ this party, this marriage, this imbecilic culture--and that meant he had to give up whatever it was he had with Gary. Which was _fine_ , apparently, seeing as Gary had already given him up weeks ago.

 

Petey said he was in _love_ with him... Jimmy snorted, thinking about it, then rubbed his head furiously, his stomach tied in miserable knots. Pete was a great guy--the  _best_ guy, actually--but he didn't know what he was talking about.  _If_ that were true, well, that was Gary's problem, and if he wanted to make it Jimmy's problem then that was his prerogative. As far as Jimmy knew, Gary was only in love with his own misery.

 

Jimmy had decided to _live._ And every time he caught himself looking at that high-backed chair, focusing on that ankle to see if it was still bouncing, he felt like dying.

 

 

* * *

  


 

Finally, the party began to thin out. Smarter guests departed with their families, and the remaining adults and teens were celebrating the season by getting sloppy drunk. He no longer felt the weight of attention from guests, as they were too busy dancing or screaming at each other over the light Christmas jazz music that some hateful person had turned up to eleven. His step-father, usually immaculate, had even loosened his bowtie. Jimmy exhaled, for what felt like the first time that night, and snuck off to the kitchen to grab himself a beer.

 

As he shut the refrigerator door, he was startled by the looming figure of Pinky's cousin. He put a hand on his chest, playing up the moment.

 

"Jesus, Blondie, you scared me. You trying to kill a guy?"

 

"That's not my name, _stupide_ ," she giggled, and he could tell from her fragrant exhalation that she'd been drinking too. No wonder all these people are alcoholics, Jimmy thought, they train them since birth with these stupid parties.

 

"You've been Mr. Popular tonight," she said, oozing effortlessly into his personal space. She chewed on her lower lip and fiddled with his tie, causing him to take a few steps back against the counter. He felt his face flush red.

 

"Just being a good host," he said, trying to sound light and airy. Under any other circumstances he'd be glad of the attention, but lately...

 

"Hmm? What a good son you are... Your _brother_ didn't seem too concerned with keeping up appearances, though," she said, and he flushed deeper at the unexpected mention of Gary. Perhaps she noticed, because she turned her eyes up to him then and fluttered her eyelashes.

 

"Yeah, well, that's me," he said, his mouth suddenly dry. "The _good_ son."

 

" _CHERIE."_

 

Pinky was standing in the doorway, her Christmas tiara askew on her forehead. She looked very out of sorts, very un-Pinky-like, which was enough to bring a big smile to Jimmy's face for the first time that night. She seemed to catch herself in disarray and drew to her full height, regarding Jimmy and, apparently Cherie, down her aristocratic nose.

 

"There you are, I was looking for you. Come _on_ , everyone's hanging out in the drawing room."

 

" _Oui, connard_ ," Cherie sighed, and went to follow Pinky, dragging Jimmy by his tie.

 

" _What_ did you just say?"

 

"I said, 'yes, cousin.'"

 

"I doubt it. Besides, you go to school in France, but you're from _Richdale,_ okay, so speak _American_."

 

Jimmy just tried to keep his balance as he was dragged behind the bickering girls, careful not to spill his beer.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jimmy despised the drawing room, but it was a little comforting to see it in such disarray during the party. It was supposed to be closed off from guests, but apparently Derby or someone had bribed or charmed a maid to let them in. The fire was unmade, so the only light came from a rather sad lamp next to the sofa. Jimmy was moderately surprised to see Petey sitting in that pool of light, looking supremely uncomfortable, clinging to it like a buoy at sea. He must have been guarding the light source from other teens who wanted to turn it off for better groping.

 

"Hey, Pete. Long time no se-" Jimmy managed to get out before he was yanked to the floor by the slim fist holding his tie.

 

"Oh, _great,_ Hopkins is here. Good work, Pinky," Derby drawled, slamming the book he was perusing shut with a _whump._

 

"It wasn't _my_ fault," Pinky shrieked. "It was the French Connection over here."

 

"What's wrong, Derby? Iz there a problem with Jimmy being 'ere?" Cherie had settled her skirts on the floor, and she looked up at Derby with a pouty face framed with curls. Oh good, Jimmy thought, her phony French accent got really dialed up when she wanted something, apparently.

 

"N-no, on the contrary," Derby said, looking uncharacteristically flustered. Shit, okay. Guess the accent was working was working for him.

 

"I suppose it was getting rather dull in here. We can always count on Hopkins--or _Smith_ , rather--to liven things up a bit. Can't we, Jimmy?" Derby looked at him dangerously, his eye zoomed in on Cherie's hand around Jimmy's tie.

 

Jimmy just shrugged and took a long pull on his beer. He wasn't their monkey. He'd play along, but he was done dancing for the night.

 

"I have an idea," Cherie said, her eyes glinting dangerously. She reached over to where Biff was sprawled against the sofa and grabbed the wine bottle out of his hand. There was about a quarter bottle left, and she tipped it back and finished it in one go.

 

"So _that's_ what they teach in French school," Jimmy quipped, earning a few snickers and an extremely abused look from poor Pinky.

 

When the liquid was gone, she brought her pink lips off the head of the bottle with an obscene pop. If she didn't already, she now had the attention of every boy in the room.

 

"It's a game we play in France," she explained, setting the empty bottle onto the newly replaced carpet and spinning it with a flick of her wrist.

 

"It's called _sept minutes dans le ciel_."

 

 

**GARY**

 

It was absolutely _inconceivable_ , perhaps even moronically so, that the fate of Gary Smith _(Genius Achiever (TM))_ should totter so precariously on the behavior of one idiot redhead.  An idiot redhead who pulled his pud like a chimp, shoved lesser imbeciles into lockers, and probably couldn't even name all the states, much less spell them.  After everything that had happened between the two of them over the last few months, (hell, _the last few years_ ,) some things had stayed, confusingly, the same.  Jimmy Hopkins was still the same old disgusting gum on the bottom of Gary's mental shoe that he couldn't manage to scrape off. He was _still_ a source of infinite frustration. He was _still_ the equivalent of the dog that wouldn't quit rummaging in the trash and causing problems. And thinking about punching James in the face still generated a series of _very positive_ responses, tingling somewhere in the pleasure receptors of Gary’s brain. But now, Gary was realizing something else. Something he thought would never _ever change_ had actually, fundamentally changed.  He had _never_ , in his entire life,  ever actually _pined for_ another human being. Until now.  It was, without a doubt, the most confounding feeling Gary Smith had ever felt. 

It was stupid, but, in a distant and unfamiliar way, Gary hopelessly missed Jimmy’s presence. Of course, Gary had been musing over this very concept of longing over the last week. It was all so undeniably idiotic. All of it. The whole confusing debacle. So juvenile? Embarrassing. It was so.. so… _rudimentary._ Gary knew it. Petey knew it. And apparently even Hopkins knew it, considering how irrevocably he had slammed the gate down between them that night in the driveway. It was a substantially difficult (ok fine _, a borderline intolerable_ ) situation to have to process, and in the end, what ended up happening was just as rudimentary.  Gary's body had simply rejected the entire idea of grief. Falling asleep inopportunely had certainly been a distasteful development, granted.  It was unnatural, especially for someone whose normal concept of a good night's sleep was three hours of ankle jiggling and then pounding a Beam Cola. But whatever other options that might have been left after to relive the pain were nothing more than cruel fantasies. What avenue remained for Gary to explore? What options did he have left? Crawling back on his hands and knees to Jimmy in apology would never be an option. Gary didn’t _‘do’_ groveling.  And he didn’t _‘do’_ praising either. Whispering words of endearment to Jimmy mingled in Gary’s mind simultaneously with whispering insults, twining impossibly together as one in the same. What was there left? What could he say? There was just…. nothing. A total lack of _‘something’s._

The end result was a simple switch flipping down.  Gary's enormous brain had apparently decided to take a rain check on the subject of Jimmy Hopkins in general. Whenever he thought about Jimmy now, first Gary got mad, and then sad, and then tired. It was an irrational, all-consuming kind of exhaustion, as if lying down for the first time after a 50 mile vertical hike. Sleeping, Gary understood for the first time, was simply a byproduct of no longer being able to process. He certainly cared. Oh, _he cared_.  He cared more strongly about this than he had possibly cared about anything in his life, but without an avenue to channel his frustrations, there was simply nothing left to do. No other course of action. Other than sleep, of course. Turn the brain off, turn off the pain. _Click_.  

But…

 Smith supposed, it could have been a lot worse. He hadn't actually succeeded in burning his father's mansion down during his mental fallout, after all. Rational thought returned very occasionally.  Gary still had his freedom, and a certain level of autonomy. He hadn’t committed an unforgivable crime. Not yet. 

 _…And yet still...  
_  
It would have been... _satisfying_... to watch the flames. Gary’s mother's voice whispered to him sometimes, in the dark. This knowledge was met with mixed emotions.

 

 

Even Gary’s tried and true cruelty approach to his conversations seemed to have lost it's succor, after Jimmy’s absence.  Of course, the sweet sting of watching a barb slide home would never entirely stop being fun. Gary had read enough books to have a loose concept of what sadism was. But, after the wedding, things had somehow become different, somewhere along the line, lost in the tangled underbrush of Gary’s mind. Something internally had shifted, lifted up and groaned and rolled over into a new position like some ancient beast. Everything Hopkins had touched had fundamentally been changed. Gary was over trying to deny it, though he would never stop being mad about it, or trying to understand it. And Jimmy's emphatic rejection had hit Gary hard, like an apocalyptic comet plummeting to earth. 

Of course, there was no thought for any of Gary’s double standards. Thoughts about rejecting Jimmy, about turning him away, about pushing him back _again_ and _again_. How had it come as such a staggering surprise to hear those words of rejection? How had Jimmy so flatly declared an end without saying anything first? Gary passed over thoughts of Jimmy’s hand reaching for him on the library stairs, of the cruelly gentle bump of his head as he laid on Gary’s lap, over memories of the pleading humility in his voice. Gary did what he wanted. He had always been like that. He _wanted_ what he _wanted_ until he didn't want it anymore. But after discarding something, he almost always came back later on to pick it up again. He was ambitious in that way, and because of it he was almost never _really_ done with _anything_. He was simply too curious. And probably most importantly, greedy. But how did he explain to the world that he wanted anything and everything?  
   
 If he was actually being completely honest with himself ( _for a change_ ) Gary had never felt so alone. The breakup of their total NON relationship had left Smith to hang suspended somewhere between emotions that made no sense. In a way, Gary knew he would never be able to understand what was happening to him. Primarily, because the source of  his trouble was literally a human intelligence interference beacon. But, secondarily, because he had never actually had a friend.  

 

 

"I'm glad to see you haven't committed arson yet this evening. Unless _you_ were the one who defecated into your mother's _designer purse_?"

Gary at last cracked an eye open from his hard lean in the high backed chair and regarded his father, whose cocktail glittered wetly in hand. The youngest Smith didn't move, but he did bother to open both of his eyes.

"...she's not _my_ mother." the retort came after a pause, unsure.

"Sometimes _I_ like to think _you're_ not _my_ son."

Mr. Smith swayed slightly where he stood, his bow-tie pulled uncharacteristically loose. The crowd had thinned out here, and with nobody close to hear him, there was a dangerous glitter to the old man’s eye. He was drunk. Gary didn't need to squint at the ruddy flush of his face to tell how many Old Fashioneds deep he already was, this evening. After a long night of handshaking and socialite climbing, he was rounding off the event by indulging in some good, old fashioned, traditional Smith Family Torture. Gary had always had a sharp teacher in that game. Now, it made him feel resigned, and he rolled his scalp against the chair as he looked away.

"Sit up, boy, for Godsake. This isn't a _flop house_. Where is your spinal chord? You're _embarrassing_ your _father_." Gary listened to the tinkle of ice cubes as he grudgingly straightened in the chair.

"...of course, then again, you would _prefer_ that, wouldn't you? _Embarrassing_ me. _Just like your mother._ "   

Right away, it was clear that Gary knew his father didn't mean Jimmy's mother. Mr. Smith’s voice had dripped black tar, and Gary looked up angrily as he thought of the upstairs portrait, and the feeling of the cold name placard beneath his fingertips.

"She was _too good_ for you. Isn't that why you _downgraded_? Are you _embarrassed_?"

 

 

The slap came as a surprise, hot and crisp against the teenager’s stinging cheek. Gary instinctively wrapped a hand around his bad elbow and cringed away as Mr. Smith chuckled at his weakness, low and condescending in the pit of the throat. Gary’s eyes furiously skated the ground as the skin at his hairline grew hot.

“MY son. _Myyyyyyy…. son_.” the words rumbled thickly, stretching out and melting into one another. “My… _only_ … son. What did I do to deserve such a _malignant mistake_? Hmm?”  
   
Gary physically restrained himself from violently standing up. “The last time I checked, you had _two_ sons now, _dad_.” 

“Do you think that little shithead is going anywhere with his life? Hmmm? You think if your _little friend_ was left to his own devices that he could amount to anything greater than grocery store bagger? But I suppose he would _have to do,_ as a stand-in son, you understand, _in a pinch_. James is the price I paid to have the mother. An exquisite woman, truly.  And a man has _needs_ , son. It’s _perfectly natural_.”

When Gary made a face clearly broadcasting disgust at the concept of his father’s sex life, Mr. Smith let a pregnant pause draw out. 

 

 

“But… then….  Perhaps I didn’t… _appropriately instruct you_ … in that area? Should I have Mr. Meadows send a woman?”

The old man leaned in, slurring slightly as his volume lowered. “Or are you _sssstillllll interested_ in messing around after dark in that _boy’s dormitory_ of yours? I won’t have a _Harrington scandal_ under my roof, I think I’ve made myself _perfectly_ clear about that. But then, of course, there’s always _aversion therapy_ to consider?”

Rejection had always been a powerful instigator of arguments in the Smith household. Who rejected who, for how long, and why. Tonight, with enough high proof rocket fuel to ignite the jet engine of rejection that was the current Mr. Smith, Gary let the feelings wash over him. Anger and embarrassment played off one another in a progressively mounting cacophony, rage at his father turning his rings backward before a beating, rage at the memory of his mother's death, rage at the hands of servants on Gary’s arm so many more times than any biological relative. Rage at the thoughtless finality of his admittance to the asylum, and at the thoughtless selfishness of his surprise return. Nothing would ever be good enough for Gary’s father, and now, worst of all, neither was Jimmy. _Little shithead? Grocery store bagger?_ Somehow, even _knowing_ his father, that came as a surprise. Gary felt like his fathers insults were like listening to himself on a loop, and it jacked up the intensity of noise in his brain, until the whole tumultuous hurricane came up to an abrupt and sharp end.

Silence.

 Gary looked up at his father’s face, for once openly letting him see the hurt there, before letting it all go. Sane or insane, successful or hated, straight or something else, nothing would ever be good enough. Mr. Smith would never change. He was a bully, in every possible capacity of the word, and if he had done anything with his life other than inherit then accrue an additionally vast fortune, then he had trained his son well. This was the true face of cruelty. Father or son, it seemed not to matter. They were mirrors of each other, and Gary very clearly now saw how much he hated his own reflection. _Everything_ would have to change. 

“You _have_ made yourself clear, sir. _Crystal_.” Gary announced, sitting up straighter, finally _waking up._

 “Good.” Mr Smith barked back, standing straighter again himself, somehow unconsciously mirroring his son even as he swayed where he stood. “Now stop moping around like a _nancy boy_ and get to work. Do you think our reputation exists in a vacuum? If I see your bottom in this chair one more time again tonight, I’ll make it wish you never have to sit down again! Now, go. _March_!”

  

 

* * *

 

  
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Gary, after drifting through the thinning party for some time, that as he walked by the drawing room he saw what he could only assume was an inbred, eleven-toed lackwit relative of some distantly European Vale family.  She was speaking in a tone remotely resembling French, which was the detail that had initially summoned Gary’s attention. The night was littered with just such out of towners, and throughout his childhood, Gary had become accustomed to the wealthy extended family and friend collective making annual visits to the house on major holidays. Nobody in Bullworth ran a holiday event quite like the Smiths, who took the the concept of _‘drinks and appetizers’_ and elevated it closer to the level of  _‘holding royal court’_.  Gary recalled past Christmases where he would have spent the evening attempting to charm just such relatives. Like everyone else Gary had ever met, the statistical chance of that person being a moron made manipulating them laughably simple.  He heard her forced accent before he even laid his uninterested gaze on her blond head. But this time there was a distinct difference. As he lingered with his fingertips still kissing the door frame, Gary watched as this suddenly and particularly insufferable person poured herself into the lap of a very bemused Jimmy Hopkins.

So THIS was where he had gone.

 _‘Not Surprised’_ grappled very briefly instead with _‘Violently Unsettled’_ , and for that flesh-rending moment, Smith fought a sudden, intense rush of anger.  He managed to reign the sensation in before he flipped a nearby side table, cocktails and all.  But just barely. And at great cost. Across the room, somehow pigeonholed beneath the only bright yellow circle of lamplight anywhere nearby, Petey had silently spotted him.

 _“Sept… minyoo…_ uh,  _dans_ , what? Do you need to sneeze?” 

Jimmy’s dulcet tone attempting to imitate french drifted across the room and hit Gary in the face like a two by four, stunting his thought process. Petey had already locked eyes with him, but listening to Hopkins simply speaking was a task now somewhere as difficult as wading through mud. The childhood companions regarded each other privately across the room, Petey very subtly jerking his head in a beckoning motion. Gary minutely shook his head in return, preparing to back up again, before Derby’s voice cracked through the space between them and ended their silent battle on the spot.

 

 

“I _say_! Well would you chaps have a look at who _finally_ decided to _grace_ us with his royal presence? We had the _Pauper_ before and now we have the _Prince_ , too? The absolute set, how _lucky_!” Harrington loudly broadcast across the conversation of the room, fully redirecting everyone’s attention.

Since Gary’s complete social meltdown and descent into a semi-permanent sleep state, he had offered Derby precisely zero social graces, and mixed with developing an unsettlingly invested interest in Gary’s personal life, Derby hadn’t taken to any of that at all. His blue eyes twinkled cruelly beneath an artfully misplaced strand of golden blond hair, and after a beat, Gary yanked his jacket down over his sore arm and approached the group.

  
“What _game_ are you playing?” He asked casually, an unruffled smile masking how every fiber of his body fought the desire to look at Jimmy.

The idiot french girl twisted around from her perch at Jimmy’s side to give the new guest an appraising once-over. She seemed to like what she saw because when she spoke again, her voice was inviting.

 

 

“ _Sept minutes dans le cidl!_ You are more zan welcome to play, monsieur prince! I was just about to… how do you say? _Baiser dan le noir avec monsieur pauper_?”  she giggled, the noise sharpening at the end with a hiccup, and for the dead space of five entire seconds, Jimmy and Gary locked eyes with one another. Color crept up Jimmy’s neck while simultaneously draining from Gary’s face, until they mutually both looked away.

From the couch, Pinky made a furious groan, her voice shrill. “CHERIE! Your first language is English! _English_! You are being _such_ a _brat_! Remember what happened with all those waiters on the Bermuda cruise with great grandmother? Do you have any _clue_ how many dry cleaning bills _my daddy_ had to cover?”

“ _Do_ let Cherie have her fun, Pinky, you are being an absolute spoilsport!” Derby argued, crossing his legs on the couch and pinging his eyes between everyone present with apparent delight at the crackling tension. Biff sat down stiffly beside him and Derby seemed not to notice his own hand going out to clench the larger boy’s thigh up by the knee.

 

 

Pinky regarded her cousin with mild disgust, but quickly brushed it off. “I just don’t see how fumbling in some _smelly old closet_ for seven minutes could be absolutely any fun? I have to _insist_ that my body _only_ comes in contact with Egyptian cotton surfaces!”

“Well, I can’t imagine that should be a problem? I’ll be sure to build you _your own wing_ of the house when we’re married, darling.” Derby countered, sliding his fingers up Biff’s leg. Everyone ignored the enormous boxer as he grunted and turned faintly pink.

 

 

“It’s just the kind of filthy thing that makes babies with twelve fingers, you know.”

“ _Au contraire,_ isn’t it making love with ze sibling or ze cousin zat makes the babies with _douze_ fingers?”  


“Hah! Then you’d know all about _that_ , Cherie, wouldn’t you??”

 “I _told_ you Pinky, zat it was _a mistake! Je ne savais pas qu'il était mon frère! il était un garçon de piscine très sexuelle!_ ”

“A SEXY POOL BOY? WE WERE IN MARSEILLE IN _FEBRUARY_!”

 _“-HEIFER SURPOIDS STUPIDE-“_  
“-MOTHER _NEVER_ COULD TOLERATE YOU-“

“CAN _I_ PLAY?” Gary shouted, interjecting himself over the steadily intensifying argument, and effectively silencing both women in their tracks. Pinky even had the dignity to flush, and she fanned herself as she looked away. Gary allowed a grin to cut across his face for the first time that night, flashing the gap in his teeth.

“I’ll play.” He announced again flatly, after the quiet had sufficiently spread out. Now it was the circle’s turn to regard him in shock, forgotten Pete Kowalski most of all, as Smith traversed the circle and sat solidly down on the floor next to Jimmy, carefully arranging his sprained elbow so it settled gently on his knee. 

“But since I’m _new_ , the game should _start over._ That’s _only fair,_ right?” He flashed Cherie a manicured smile, and when she flushed and smiled back, he thought she would go along with the idea.

 

 

There was only _one_ person in the room Gary knew wouldn’t agree with the sentiment, but unfortunately this person was an idiot. Also, he was short. And stupid, and he looked like God’s laziest creation, and one of his shoelaces was coming untied and his opinions didn’t even really matter anyway, did they? Gary also realized, with a certain amount of private, delirious terror, that he was sure the next person the moron chose to put his mouth on _definitely_ wouldn’t be Cherie. He would see to that.

Derby groaned and rolled his eyes. "The princess, the _princess_ , the prince and the pauper. _Just fantastic_."

 **JIMMY**

 

 

And there he was. The man of the hour. 

He was glad to see him, Jimmy realized, with a small measure of surprise and disappointment in his own lack of resolve. Seeing him lurking in the doorway, Jimmy had the realization that this might be the first time he'd seen Gary upright in weeks. He regarded his pale, drawn friend with a look he hoped was private and wondered what had brought him here. The Gary Smith standing before him, wan and irritable as he was, was still a far cry from the sack of wet sand that had been haunting the corner armchair all evening long. Maybe his meds had kicked in, or he'd done a line of white off a gingerbread house. Maybe his father had had a word with him, he thought darkly, his gaze falling onto Gary's arm. 

Pinky and Cherie were fighting again, their shrill voices cutting through the fog of his thoughts in pitch if not in word. The room was in conversation, but he was apart from it somehow, as if hearing it from underwater. He let Gary catch his eyes and held them as long as he could. He wanted to signal to him somehow. To say something in secret code--but when their eyes met and the moment came, he found there was no common language between them and nothing to say. He looked away angrily, wishing he would just leave. But when Gary lowered himself to the floor beside Jimmy, he still felt his body shifting to accommodate him.

He wanted Gary to be there, and he hated himself for it.

Especially given the fact that Gary was _Gary_ , and would never willingly enter a social situation without some hideous plan, some ulterior motive. Jimmy knew that better than anyone, and yet he barely had time to register the game before Gary was putting it all into motion.

"Here, I'll get it going," Gary chirped, plucking the wine bottle out of Cherie's tiny hands and giving it a forceful spin. The green glass skidded and spun across the carpet, and Jimmy's panic rose in proportion to the slowing of the bottle, to the point that he was lunging for it before the spinning could even stop.

In one fluid motion he scooped the bottle up and tossed it over his shoulder into the nearest wastebasket. Cherie and Derby let out twin cries of delight as it arced through the air and landed with a sharp crack in the pile of party debris. Petey winced. Pinky stared. But Jimmy's eyes were on Gary, narrowed in challenge.

"Whoops," he deadpanned. 

"Jimmy! Don't tell me you're  _jealous_ ," Cherie cried, draping herself across his broad shoulder. Her eyes bounced excitedly between the two "Smiths", sensing and seriously misinterpreting the energy. Any reproach was belied by the pleasure dripping from her voice at the idea of boys, particularly these strange, scrappy boys, fighting over her. 

Jimmy was still zeroed in on Gary, who leveled him with an expression as infuriating as it was unknowable. Jimmy's anger bubbled nauseatingly, irrationally. Why was he _here_?

  
_Maybe he wants to reconcile_ , part of him thought, weakly. Maybe he was here to set things back on an equilibrium. _But what does it mean to reconcile when before we were lovers, we were trying to kill each other? What is it, exactly, that we're going back to?_

  
_There is nothing to go back to. Everything was just leading up to now._

Jimmy snorted, finally breaking the mutual glare.

"What was that about, old boy? We know you're prone to violent outbursts and all"—and his bejeweled fingers clenched around Biff's thigh again, causing the boxer to shift and cross his legs—"but we were led to believe the Smiths were beating that out of you." 

Jimmy's fingers clenched into the carpet, but he kept his face affectless and shrugged.

"It's just no fun unless there are enough players. With just the four of us, it was bound to end up on _me and Gary_ or _Pinky and Cherie_. Bad odds. Nobody wants that," he said meaningfully, his tone laced with contempt.

"I'd take it," Cherie said cheerfully, at the same time as Pinky said "Literally never." 

Gary's eyes were still burning a hole in the side of his head, but Jimmy ignored him and began working the room, guiding and cajoling and shoving other kids into the party game. There were still about a dozen teenagers left, their parents elsewhere in the house getting obliterated. Classmates and strangers lurked and groped in every shadow, and he was determined to get as many of them between him and Gary has he possibly could. Even poor Pete was tossed to the floor, falling practically face-first into Christy Martin's lap. 

When the circle had widened to a respectable size and gender ratio, Jimmy started to feel at ease again. Maybe a horny teenage party game was just what the doctor ordered. In a past life, Jimmy had been energized by making out with friends and acquaintances in public situations. Seven minutes in heaven—or spin the bottle, or whatever the hell this game was—was a chance to get back to his roots. Back to normal. 

  
Someone else had already produced another empty bottle—they were in no short supply at this hour of the party—and as Jimmy rejoined the circle next to Gary, Cherie had already seized it and sent it spinning across the floor.

He could feel the boys in the room hold their collective breath, but Jimmy's eyes were back on Gary. He couldn't help it. For some reason, he felt like he was watching a friend who had just come out of surgery start to walk again. Gary was watching the bottle like he could move it with his mind if he just glared hard enough, and when it rolled to a stop on Parker Ogilvie, just a hair past Jimmy's ankle, Gary's face broke into a smug grin as if he was somehow responsible.

Cherie looked deflated. But she dutifully got to her feet and started to lead Parker by the hand to an adjoining room. 

" _À plus tard_ ," she whispered to Jimmy as she passed. Jimmy screwed his face into a frown and leaned over to Pete conspiratorially.

"The fuck did she just call me?"

Pete collapsed into nervous giggles, and Jimmy cracked a wide smile. He caught Gary's eye, who rolled his eyes in disgust. He smiled wider.

For just a second, Jimmy felt balanced. It all felt comfortable, familiar. But a moment later the door to the study opened and a shadow appeared in the hall. Jimmy and Gary whipped their heads up simultaneously, eyes wide—but it was just some Preppie's cousin returning with an armful of booze from the kitchen. Still, it was enough to dispel the feeling of safety, and Jimmy was angry again. He didn't look at Gary again for a while.

 

 

* * *

 

  
After a few minutes of awkward silence and ears straining to hear sounds from the other room, someone suggested a game of Never Have I Ever to help pass the time. 

Everyone got a fresh cup of whatever they were drinking, and Pinky started them off.

"Oh, I know! Never have I ever _not_ slept on fresh Egyptian cotton sheets."

Jimmy gave her an incredulous look, but he and a few other teenagers took begrudging sips. 

"Never have I ever had a sex dream about someone with an inheritance of less than a million dollars," Derby volunteered, radiating smugness.

Jimmy took another sip, grumbling under his breath. He'd have to out-think these rich kids; they had a lot of bullshit in common that would end up in him getting knocked out first. He was trying to come up with something not involving incest (seeing as he'd sort of, accidentally, kind of technically done that now), when Pete Kowalski blurted,

"Never have I ever had a sex dream about a family pet." 

There was a moment of silence as everyone just stared at poor Pete in various levels of shock and disgust. Except for Gary, of course, whose face held a look of pure and unadulterated joy at this turn of events.

"Peter, I say..."

"Horses count," he clarified.

Over half the Preppies took a sip. Gord finished his cup off and went to go get another.

Jimmy was dumbstruck, but before he could open his mouth to totally lose it he heard a sound he hadn't heard in quite a while. Gary was laughing. It sounded a little rusty, a little dry--it was clear that it had been a while. But there were actual tears in the corners of his eyes, and he slapped his knee in cruel glee as he no doubt imagined Gord Vendome nutting in the middle of the night over Papa's Lucky Mustache.

Petey was blushing, now, but not from the sex stuff--he was looking at Gary almost shyly, happily. Jimmy tried to remember the last time Pete had made Gary laugh in a way that wasn't hollow or cruel. It might have been before Jimmy knew them. And he was happy for Pete, he really was, that their relationship seemed to be getting back on track. Pete glanced at him, and Jimmy tried to smile encouragingly, but something from Pete's expression let him know he wasn't doing too great a job.

The last time Jimmy had seen Gary laugh like that was the last night they'd been together. It had been around one A.M., definitely past midnight anyway. Jimmy couldn't remember what they'd been talking about, really would have given anything to remember what it was he'd said to make Gary laugh that way, but suddenly he was just convulsing on the sheets. He couldn't see him well in the dark, so he was just a writhing greyish blur and the sound. Gary's laugh, his _genuine_ laugh, was probably the dorkiest sound ever to happen. It was the origin of the word "guffaw." It had set Jimmy off, which had Gary laughing harder, and Jimmy couldn't remember falling asleep that night so he only assumed he had laughed himself out, his face and stomach aching from exertion over nothing really that funny at all.

"Jimmy?" came Pinky's voice, a note of concern in her tone.

Gary wasn't laughing anymore, now. He was just looking at Jimmy, who realized he'd been staring at him for God-knows-how long, with God-knows-what expression. How much of what he'd just been feeling, remembering, had been on his face? _Fuck._ He wasn't ready. He wasn't ready for this at all.

"Sorry, Pinky," he said quickly, shaking his head. "I, uh--"

  
He was saved from having to make an explanation when Cherie came gliding back into the room, a stumbling Parker behind her. " _Je suis revenu_ ," she trilled, and began reapplying her lip gloss.

At once, Jimmy saw his golden ticket. A chance to get away, to clear his head, and to reinforce a crucial boundary. As soon as Parker had settled back on the carpet, Jimmy plucked the bottle out of his hand and sent it spinning before anyone could stop him. 

  
He could feel Gary tensing beside him, his body shifting to make some kind of move, but before he had a chance to Jimmy shot his hand out to stop the bottle on Cherie again before she could even sit down.

"Well, would you look at that?" Jimmy said as he shot to his feet, eliciting a squeal of excitement from Cherie and several groans from surrounding boys. Without another look at Gary or Pete, he took Cherie by the hand and dragged her into the dark, adjoining room.

"Don't wait up~," Cherie called to Pinky in a sing-song voice as Jimmy slammed the door, unbalancing his parents' honeymoon photo from the mantle and sending it toppling to the floor.

 

 

 

**GARY**

 

 

"Monsieur Prince!"

 

Cherie giggled invitingly when the door to the designated makeout sitting room burst open literally forty-five seconds after closing. Gary clawed the wood closed hard behind him, his silhouette against the rich, dull gold of the party room making him look alarmingly bestial for a brief moment before shadows closed once again around the dark lounge's three occupants.

 

Spotting Gary moving again in the dark, Cherie's voice communicated the kind of thick, fake shock that people already aware of their own surprise birthday parties slapped on for the sake of protocol.  " _A ménages à trois?_ With moi et... ton _frère_?? How absolutely _scandalous_!"  


Nothing about her was _actually_ scandalized, though Cherie certainly was more than a little tipsy. The flush of alcohol that touched her white cheeks with spots of pink was obvious even in the shadows. Smith's stomach boiled like a cauldron at her assuming self-interest as he made a direct line for where Jimmy stood, between the dead fireplace and the chez lounge no doubt used throughout the night for more nefarious purposes than reading. He fumed silently at the way her hand clutched Jimmy's sleeve, as obvious as a dog marking it's territory. She was used to getting her own way. Like she owned all the things she chose to touch. It was ridiculous to the point of laughter.  Because, honestly, if anyone in this house was deserving of those qualities? It certainly wasn't some drunk, inbred fake-french new money harlot with sticky fingers. It was _Gary Smith_. His own revulsion and resolution physically burned him from the inside, twisting his guts and creating a spark of intent he hadn't felt in weeks.

 

Gary came to a full stop in front of them, smiling alarmingly between the two, his teeth flashing dangerously white even in the dark. 

 

He couldn't look at Jimmy directly. Not yet. Not knowing the furious accusation he would find there. He had no way of knowing for sure, but Smiths made a habit of always assuming the worst. They were barely touching, Smith hadn't allowed them the time, but this was exactly the kind of overly zealous invasive maneuver that got some people punched in the face. And so he addressed Cherie directly, his mouth slowly contorting into the bitter pantomime of a grin. 

 

"A threeway? With _you two_? _Literally never._ " He spat. Gary intentionally echoed Pinky's crass sentiment from earlier, and Cherie's smile dropped from her face.

 

"Quelle?"

 

"Gary-" Jimmy's voice at last came low, a dangerous edge of warning that Gary quickly smothered by shooting out his good hand to grip the other boy's shoulder. Though it was probably a sign of nerves that Jimmy hadn't spoken until this point, Smith still harbored a fantasy somewhere in the back of his mind that the bleeding looks shot Gary's way over the last half hour had to mean something. He still refused to look James in the eye, his full focus entirely directed on the girl, but his fingers dug deep into the fabric beneath his touch, twisting with progressively more intensity. To anyone from the outside, the gesture reeked of brotherly protectiveness, though neither of them were secretly foolish enough to actually believe that.

 

"You know, I _thought_ you looked familiar. Cherie, right? Or, was it actually... Christina? Christa? Now that I know you're _Pinky's_ cousin, though? It all shook out. You _know_ what I'm talking about, don't you? Everybody _already knows_. Your dirty little secret. Last summer? Remember? _Everyone's_ talking."

 

Cherie physically drained of color, her voice growing fragile as she dropped the accent entirely. "...Wh-what?"

 

"Gary, come on, man! Cut it out, don't be an asshole!"

 

"No, no it's not my fault! Ce n'est pas vrai! You're _horrible_ , Monsieur Prince!" 

 

"But you wanna know the WORST part? You _do_ , don't you? Rumor has it your _daddy's_ guilty too. He's got the _same_ secret." The teenager leaned in closer to whisper to Cherie, his arm becoming like an iron vice to shove Jimmy back and away.

 

"Did you know he was there? _What a sick bastard_." Gary's conspiratorial murmur bled acid in the suddenly stifling darkness. "Really. I mean, they're _related_."

 

There was a terrible, pregnant silence as the girl stared tremulously back and forth between the two taller boys. And then, like some kind of horrible flood gate bursting open, Cherie exploded into violent tears and shoved her way roughly past. Gary let his hand fall to the side and off Jimmy's shoulder as she fled the scene, her hysteria equal in proportion to the wideness of his grin.  A deep and resonating satisfaction followed her as his hand raised to salute her out. Smith even laughed as she beat her hasty retreat, cackling dryly as he watched her slam the door with a tearful grunt. They listened as she tore through the next room, upsetting guests and friends alike.

 

_"Cherie? What's wrong? Was Smith being absolutely vile again? I TOLD HIM not to go in there."  
"Did you tell? Pinky, you PROMISED you wouldn't tell anyone! You swore!"_

  
_"I say, what's going on, chums?  Doesn't everybody already know about that ratty brother of yours anyway? I mean the STAINS on the Tasmanian Tigerskin..."_  
"Darby! UNRELATED!"  
 

And then, behind him in the dark, inevitably-

 

"What _the hell_ , Gary? What was that? _What_ fucking secret?"

 

The endorphins rewarding his brain for a job well done made Gary almost unafraid to turn around. When he finally did pivot back to at last look Jimmy directly in the eye, an easy smile pulled his lips wide. He offered a casual shrug.

 

"Secret? _I_ don't know. I mean, don't they _all_ have some stupid secret? I guessed." Smith sucked air in through the gap in his teeth, making it whistle. "I also guess by _that_ reaction that hers must be _pre~tty bad._ "

 

For a moment, there was a certain glib joy in looking at Jimmy's furious face again. It felt... familiar. But a second later predictably found Jimmy's fist flying, and Gary staggered back from the shove that hit him hard at the ball joint of his bad shoulder, casting his face into shadow and hiding his utter look of surprise. A hand instinctively went out to clutch his still-too-sore elbow, and then Jimmy was in his face. Shouting, Gary's brain dryly registered a second later. _Why_ was he _always_ shouting? It was like he had no concept of what an indoor voice was. All he had harnessed thus far was guttural, aggressively noisy babbling or ineffectually threatening whispers forced past lips stiff enough to pop a cap off a bottle. Both were bad, but the yelling was more mind-numbing than anything. What was it?  Some primordial instinct to attack first and reason later, no doubt. Smith took it in stride, standing slowly straight again with a resigned tightness.

 

"What's your _fucking problem_ , Gary? What was that shit? I didn't ask you to come in here. You KNOW how totally weird that is! Why are you such an _unbelievable fucking weirdo_? This isn't a game for me like it is for you! This is about maintaining the peace, ok? Are you _trying_ to mess with me? I mean are you _stupid_ or something? Is it opposite day? Am _I_ the smart one now? If you hassle me it's gonna start some shit that _neither_ of us can afford right now, so just DON'T, asshole. We talked about this!"

 

Jimmy's tie was loose around his neck, Smith observed distantly, though the suit was one of the finer ones Smith senior had sent for to be tailored to fit Jimmy's boulderish proportions. After weeks of avoiding James while he was awake, and being tortured by visions of him while asleep, Gary felt a sudden profound relief at being once again alone in his presence. It was weird how the annoying sound of his voice even now was beginning to act as a kind of poultice. What was it about Hopkins standing at his side that made Gary's thoughts even out? That made everything that stood askew seem to just... line up _a little straighter_? It was becoming progressively more and more obvious that the farther apart they were, the more tenuous Gary's hold on his sanity became. He was crazy when Jimmy was around, but, was it actually _worse_ when he _wasn't_?

 

Gary watched Hopkins yell, fascinated for once by the ugly blush of freckles that painted his cheeks a ruddy orange even in the dark. He was still shouting, but it suddenly seemed not to matter. After weeks of misery, even being shouted at, _even being shoved_ , was strangely preferable.

 

"-Keeping the peace is about our family, remember?" Jimmy continued, his voice hoarse with anger. "ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY. I don't wanna go to juvy! Do _you_? Or worse, back to Happy Volts, you psycho? Because your dumb ass can't keep a lid on it? I'm _obviously_ too stupid to figure this one out, so you'll correct me if I'm wrong here, but let me get this straight. The only reason you worked out was _good enough_ for you to snap out of your pity coma was so you could... what? Inspire a little good old fashioned terror and chaos? Are you _asking_ me to kick your ass? What makes you think you-"   

 

Abruptly shooting his good hand out again, Gary hooked his fingers around the back of Jimmy's neck and jerked him in to crush their mouths together. Smith swallowed the tail end of Jimmy's angry sputter and answered it by wracking his tongue along the roof of Jimmy's mouth, his feet moving their bodies closer together of their own volition. His hand slid up to cradle the back of Jimmy's skull, his mouth licking in deeper, the sensitive webbing between his fingers catching the fine prickle of buzzed hair there. Sharp nails followed then, dragging hard across the exposed skin, and for the space of a few perfect moments, everything about Gary's world that was upside-down seemed to flip back at it's proper angle again.  When they broke apart, maybe a minute (or was it years?) later, they regarded the other each then with mutual expressions of slackjaw surprise. They both breathed in the same stunned silence, both each temporarily short circuited by the intensity of the moment.

 

What

 

... _exactly_ had just happened?

 

Jimmy's lips were slightly ajar in dim-witted shock, his own breath coming harsh and loud. Hopkins blinked in confusion for several stupid seconds, and equally confusing to Gary, also with a distant kind of hurt. When he finally spoke, he sounded mystified.

 

"What am I supposed to..?" 

 

Despite his heart hammering like he was on an execution block, Gary still managed to roll his eyes once before swallowing the majority of his stomach back down his throat again. He coughed twice before his vocal chords would allow any new sound to pass through.

 

"Just _shut up_ , Hopkins. OK? _Shut up._ "

 

The tight, sharp words poured out over Jimmy's face as Gary stepped even closer. Why did it feel so good to be like this again? The simple endpoint of it all was only that a world where Jimmy could be hurt was inconceivable. Who could have known that something as small as a knife could have changed so many things? It was an impossible prediction, like it had been impossible to foresee what had happened that night in the church closet, or what had happened to both of them in the lighthouse, or what had happened at the hospital when they had been alone and so afraid of what their friendship finally, actually meant.

 

The only thing Gary knew for sure, was that everything was extraneous outside of this room. His tantrums, their parents, girls, homework, rain, sleep, time...  It was all unwanted, because the only thing that finally seemed to make any damn sense was making sure Jimmy wasn't going to go away. It was hilariously simple. Gary couldn't contain his obsession with Hopkins, so the only way to make sure it didn't ruin his life any more than it already had was to just give up and accept it.  It wasn't exactly like they had ever had a strong foundation of original friendship to base anything else on. Everything was new, here. They either hated each other or... they consciously chose _not_ to.

 

"You're _so_ _annoying_." Gary's followup whisper betrayed his heart in his throat when his voice audibly wavered. "Why don't you leave the _lecturing_ up to someone who _actually_ has a grasp on the English language? And don't even pretend that french isn't totally beyond you. You know, you're _really_ transparent when you're _trying that hard_ to piss me off. _Maybe_ I have something _I'm_ trying to say. Did you think of that one, super-brain?"

 

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

"Oh of course, _now_ you want to talk!" Jimmy exclaimed, throwing his arms up in frustration. The gesture was only a moment, though, before his hands were back on Gary, shoving him back hard against the door. The sound of his step-brother's shoulder blades, or maybe his skull, hitting the solid oak door made the room echo with bone. He crowded into the taller boy's space, shoving his furious squinting glare inches from Gary's blinking mug. 

 

" _Now_ you want to say something, huh? But not the hundreds of times I tried—fuck it, _begged_  you to talk to me. You wouldn't even _look_ at me. Not even when I was lying in a hospital bed. _Then_ it was time to punch me in the face, but now, _now_ is the time to _talk?_ " 

 

This was the exact situation Jimmy had been trying to prevent for himself. Anger (and _lust_ ) were narrowing Jimmy's focus into a single point, or a million single points, specifically, all over Gary's body. Pale, sensitive places he wanted to pinch, bite, make bleed. He wanted to make him whimper and apologize, plead and pray. This was _bad_. He dimly registered that his hands were sending signals of their own, one grappling the forearm of Gary's good arm, the other clenching stubby finger-shaped bruises into Gary's bony hip. 

 

"What was that sound? Are they fighting?" came an anonymous, scandalized squeal from the other room. They must have heard Jimmy slamming Gary against the door too. He'd been keeping his voice low, thankfully, so hopefully they hadn't heard what he'd been saying, just a muffled string of curses.

 

"Maybe we should intervene?"

"He's going to kill him!" 

 

"Five hundred dollars says that after seven minutes, Scary Gary's killed and eaten him."

 

"I'll take that bet! Psycho-boy's got nothing on the Bully!"

 

As usual, the madding crowd were delighted at the prospect of bloodshed. A rumble between the Smith boys was exactly what every guest at this party, adult or otherwise, had been secretly hoping for. All it would take would be one kid running out to grab a friend, and the whole party would know—their _parents_ would know—that they were fighting again. And it would be the end.

 

Even knowing all of that... for a delirious moment, Jimmy considered ignoring them. Crowding Gary against the door in the dark, he'd found himself between Gary's legs—a place he very much enjoyed, that he'd missed _very_ much. His head was swimming, from the holiday liquor, sure, but moreso at his sudden brilliant idea of a historical reenactment of their first time. This time, _he_ could bend _Gary_ over. Jimmy could make _Gary_ cum while the party went on outside, oblivious. Whimpering and shivering and pleading with his pants down. And Jimmy could throw it back in _his_  face, _he_ could remain cool and cruel and powerful while Gary came undone in his hand.

 

His step-brother didn't even seem to realize they were being talked about; he didn't seem particularly aware that there were other people on the _planet_. Jimmy's proximity seemed to have short-circuited his brain, or maybe he was still trying to cobble together whatever hideous conversation topic he'd been so proud of himself about. This was his _last chance_ , Jimmy realized, his fingers drifting down the front of Gary's hip...

But no. The really, really fucked up thing was, Jimmy still loved Gary too much to risk getting him put away. Also himself, but mainly, well. Gary.

"Well whatever it is you gotta say, it's gotta wait," Jimmy sighed. Gary blinked, his scarred eyebrows coming together in confusion as Jimmy backed off him, a rush of cool air filling the heated space between them. 

 

"That is, unless it's something you'd like to share with the  _class._ " He indicated the room behind Gary with his chin.

 

"I don't—" Gary started, belligerent.

 

"I _do,"_ Jimmy finished. "Just—get away from the party. You can wait for me upstairs. I'll come find you once I deal with all _this,"_ Jimmy said, gesturing to the party dismissively.

 

Gary's normally cruel face looked angry, but also almost... vulnerable. Jimmy didn't want to leave it here. But he had to put a pin in it. He brought one hand to his mouth and cleared his throat, preparing to yell. 

 

"And that's the LAST thing I'll say about THAT! Quit spreading lies, Gary, this is your _last warning!_ " Jimmy shouted at the ceiling. Then he brought both hands slamming against the door beside Gary's head, rattling it on its hinges. 

 

It must have worked, because he heard a trill of pleased and terrified gasps coming from the other side of the door. Gary was still just looking at him, mouth slightly ajar, his lips wet and pink. What was Jimmy _supposed_ to _do?_

 

He leaned in close, smelling the warm, thick smell of wine on Gary's breath, rolling the bitter taste over his tongue. The memory of Gary's taste tingled throughout Jimmy's mouth, the feel of his coarse tongue pushing in, in, in.

 

"Just wait, okay?," he whispered, biting his lip to keep from kissing him, from doing something he would regret.

 

"Just wait for me one more time. I _swear_ to you, Gary. I'll be there."

 

 

**GARY**

 

 

The dubious mistrust that flashed across Gary's face lingered, the cogs in the taller boy's mind clearly whirling as he stared at Jimmy's mouth. Did he hate this so violently because Jimmy had just given him an _order_? Or, did he hate it because it stripped away Gary's dignity in a way that only Jimmy could accomplish? Wait for him? _Again_? After what had happened? It was a terrifying concept. If Jimmy didn't show, the damage it would do really would be irreparable this time.

 

After a long, unblinking stretch where both boys listened to the excited chatter of the party beyond the door, Gary finally gave a single stiff nod.

 

"Attic." The word forced itself quietly past his suddenly dry lips. If anywhere in the mansion was safe, it was the dusty storage room full of Gary's dead mother's furniture. The room his father hadn't set foot in for years. A place he refused to go. They would be able to speak freely there, though if the interaction ended up in a noisy brawl that busted out windows and toppled tables, not even the ghost of Mrs. Smith could save them from what Mr. Smith no doubt had waiting in store for just such a moment. 

 

Jimmy's face still hovered close in the dark, Smith realized. He was too close, a hungry, furious look in his eye, even after his obnoxiously loud cover-up to appease the encroaching minions Gary would sooner fling into a blazing dumpster than accept as a legitimate distraction. Instead, Gary took the opportunity to inhale Jimmy's scent, his eyes briefly fluttering closed as Jimmy's thumb purposefully grazed up the side of his thigh. Sweat and booze and sour cotton came up on the air, and something musky deeper beneath it. Hopkins had sweated through the collar of his fine white button-up, which even in this poor lighting contrasted horribly with the ruddy pink of his freckly skin. But by now, that was nothing particularly new. There was a strange thought, Gary wondered. Him growing used to a version of Hopkins dressed in appropriate formalwear. It was almost funny how Jimmy looked in a nice suit, like someone had taken the opportunity to dress up a pig and teach it to walk on it's hind legs for a freak broadway show. And yet, Gary couldn't help the way his eyes skated up and down him now, taking in the body beneath the straining fabric, Smith's face thick and sloppy with longing.

 

Gary thought of the day in the church cemetery when they had come face to face again for the first time after the expulsion that had changed both their lives. Jimmy had worn an outfit even more hideous than his face, stretching a too-small Aquaberry vest past it's threshold several times over. Gary had laughed at him, and snarled threats, and pushed Jimmy into a pile of folding chairs, only because he knew he could get away with it.  But neither of them were those people anymore.

 

" _Don't_ -" Smith's hand found itself already twisting a fist into Jimmy's collar, trying to will his beating heart to slow, wrinkling the fine cloth. "-make me wait."

 

It took an incredibly tremendous effort, but when the fist abandoned it's grip, Gary dropped it back down to his side with a look that challenged Jimmy to argue. And then he was pushing roughly away from the door, and away from Jimmy, whose smell followed him on a stubborn air current as Smith shuffled back across the room. He paused by the side door that would lead him down the servant's hall and to the back stairs, and turned to look back at Jimmy once more. A catlike grin made his teeth suddenly twinkle in the shadows. Jimmy didn't have a chance to read the danger quickly enough to prevent it before Gary's hand raised to knock a nearby vase off it's pedestal. It shattered loudly, and the room beyond gave a collectively alarmed murmur.

 

"YOU KNOW, THERE'S A SPECIAL PLACE IN HELL FOR PEOPLE WHO BREAK ANTIQUES, HOPKINS. I _KNOW_ WHAT YOU DID TO ALL THE FAMILY RUGS. BLEACH? SERIOUSLY?" Gary shouted, playing along with Jimmy's game. "YOU THINK DAD IS GOING TO PAY FOR THAT? DO YOU EVEN _HAVE_ A BANK ACCOUNT?"

 

Gary lifted an eyebrow at Jimmy in the dark, as if to say _'your fault_ ,' before finally turning and disappearing from the room.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading this part 1 of an overarching christmas narrative! Stick with us for another chapter of christmas goodness next time, featuring Heartfelt Feelings (tm) among many other things. Will the boys tearfully reunite, or will the night end in blood like so many others? WHO THE HELL EVEN KNOWS?? 
> 
> If you're reading this, it means you've stuck with us through hell and made it out on the other side. kudos to you, and thanks to our new readers as well for the kudos! Stay tuned for more sexytimes, school drama, vendettas of revenge, and out of control love squares that will make you wish you could fling yourself through a principal's skylight! MORE SOON!


	10. Attic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas Eve part II. Jimmy and Gary reconcile in the safety of the attic. 
> 
> Warnings: This chapter is pretty much exclusively dubcon smut, so watch out for blood, violence, and other weird, volatile feelings. It's consensual. Basically.

 

**GARY**

 

Hazy purple light pooled in through the dirty bay windows of the Smith mansion attic. Evidence of Gary's more recent visit was visible in the places that had been dusted, many of the large, canvas-covered landscape paintings that leaned near the door pushed back to create an open space. The fringe of the room now was a motley cityscape of blue and black shadows, kissed only on the farthest edges by the one shaded lamp Gary had managed to set upright and click on to fill the room with a muted burgundy. Drop cloths covered a piano, a stack of trunks, a standing armoire, and chairs with decorative carving and plush embroidered cushions. Gary's old mattress leaned like a drunk old man against the wall by the bay windows, and Gary eyed it too with everything else, putting it all away in his brain for later.

Beneath it on a side table whose surface had been scratched with a meticulous line of tally marks (as if made from the sharp point of a protractor,) sat a stack of drawings. Most were mathematical in nature, carefully lined up geometric tracings. Immaculately constructed buildings. Perfectly perpendicular lines of black crayon. But every now and again a different kind of drawing could be seen poking a corner out. Birds in flight. The careful outline of a tiny hand. Fire beneath a tree full of cats. Frenetic squiggles of every color and thickness. And a stick woman in a white dress with long, long black hair. A dog snarled in the background of many of the pictures.

Gary picked the stack up off the table and thumbed through them idly, huffing occasionally as some image recalled in him a childhood memory long since discarded. Petey's un-manicured scribble even seemed to grace the pages of a few of Gary's less composed pieces, pulling a grin wide across Gary's lips.

Before the asylum, simply the knowledge that Petey had dared to pollute Gary's perfect creations would have filled Smith with involuntary tremors of frustration and rage. Now, it amused Gary to think of Petey as a snotty little brat. He had always been weak, the first to hide behind Gary during a fight, the first to fall asleep, the first to give up when they hunted in the woods for whatever it was little boys hunted. But the drawings brought an unexpected spike of emotion to Gary he hadn't been expecting, and when he dropped them back on the table again, he cut loose a little laugh.

Gary had never had a friend. But that had _never_ meant he didn't have people in his life _trying to offer_ him friendship. Why had it taken so long to see that? If Gary could somehow make it through the night, to overcome the task he was setting up for himself right now with Jimmy Hopkins, then he owed Petey the apology which had been building over a lifetime.

But first,

_Jimmy._

Feeling a sudden flush of heat, Gary carefully removed his jacket and threw it over a nearby chair. In the purple attic light, his skin glowed unnaturally, and he turned towards the window in an effort to get a better judgement of his palette. The wrist he brought up to the light was still pale, washed out like an overused sheet. He laughed again, this time with less humor. It had been a long year.

So. This was it, then. Tonight. The end of the struggle.

Distantly, Gary was relieved to have finally arrived at an exhausted conclusion that could at last let him rest. It was a good time to admit what he was feeling. The drug trial he was on seemed to be of at least a very minor benefit... Gary hadn't felt tortured by his own OCD behavior in a few months. (Though decidedly his mind had been otherwise occupied by other unpleasantness. The point remained that his body wasn't falling apart.) He was, despite his negative outlook, at least back in school. And if he could only figure out how to tell Jimmy... about...

Gary sighed as he faced the glass, and hung his head low until his chin brushed the top of his chest. His good hand rose up to scratch through the slippery strands of his hair as it slid forward, and he steeled himself for what was to come.

If he couldn't convince Jimmy that they should be together again, that this time things were _different_ , then nothing else would even matter.

 

**JIMMY**

 

"Are you sure you don't want to come home _avec moi?_ "

"Cut the French, Charlotte, please. It's just me, now, and I'm bad enough at English."

Cherie pouted up at him, one slender gloved hand resting on the top of the open limo door. It was starting to snow. A fat, wet flake floated down from somewhere above the trees and splutted onto her cherubic cheek.

"I'm sorry the night didn't go as planned, and I'd love to continue things at your place. But it's _Christmas Eve_. I don't know how thrilled the Gauthiers would be to find _me_ beneath their tree in the morning."

"Not very," came Pinky's slurred voice from somewhere in the back seat. Jimmy had forgotten she was even in there.

He raised his eyebrows at Cherie, as if to say _See?_

Cherie didn't deign him with a response. Instead she looked past him up at the house, and he saw her expression change from annoyed to almost afraid, or maybe repulsed.

"You're _sure_ you want to go back in there? He's still in there, you know."

Jimmy turned and followed her gaze, raking his eyes over the imposing old house. It really did look menacing in the winter night. How many times had he stood out here, looking in? This time, however, there was a dim light on in the attic. He'd never seen that light on before. And he couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw a pale shape move by the old bay window before disappearing into the depths of the room.

"Charlotte, come _on!_ It's like three in the morning! I am _not_ waiting for you to open presents if you oversleep tomorrow." Pinky's cranky voice floated out from the belly of the limo. Jimmy could already see one of her high heels lying discarded on the floor of the car.

"Sounds to me like you've got your own monsters to worry about at home," he said, not unaffectionately.

Cherie rolled her eyes, but she was smiling a little too.

"Don't I at least get a goodnight kiss?"

"Of course," Jimmy purred, but when she leaned in with eyes closed and perfect lips parted, he found himself wooden, almost frozen. At the last second he changed trajectory and gave her a chaste peck on the cheek. When she pulled back and glared at him, he just grinned.

"Did I do it right? That's how they say goodbye in Europe, right?"

Cherie huffed in frustration, but then—maybe it was the late hour, or maybe she was just over it—something seemed to give. She yawned hugely, not the dainty baby deer yawn he would have expected, but more the kind used to show off tonsilectomy scars. Her ebullient curls wilted and relaxed, dark circles seemed to bloom under her eyes, and he may have imagined it, but he would have sworn that her gut pooched out a little more around her red velvety middle. She chucked Jimmy lightly on the shoulder and shrugged, as if to say, _Next time._

Jimmy watched the limo pull away with his hands in his pockets and a faint smile on his face. After the heat and noise of the party, it was nice to have just a moment to himself in the cold night air. He breathed in deeply, holding the cold deep in his belly, then exhaled it in a smooth stream, trying to dispel some of his anxiety with it. It helped.

Jimmy gave a little wave when the car turned at the end of the drive, before turning himself to reenter the house.

Jimmy slipped around the side of the house to enter through the side kitchen door. He'd thought he could come back in unnoticed this way, and maybe get a little snack. And he was right, in a sense. Two drunk adults (he couldn't remember their names, but he knew they were married—just not to each other) were sloppily making out on the counter, but they certainly didn't notice him. Despite him having to physically move the woman's leg off the silverware drawer so he could get out a knife. He prepared two double-decker peanut butter sandwiches, whistling to himself so he wouldn't have to hear their moaning and sloppy kissing noises, then stepped nimbly over a third man lying passed out on the tile.

Pete was gone already—after making sure Jimmy was okay, he'd managed to wrangle his parents out the door. They seemed like really sweet people, though super drunk. He hoped he'd have a chance to meet them during the day sometime soon.

The adults in the rest of the house were too drunk, too tired or too engrossed in one another to notice Jimmy as he slipped silently up the staircase. He paused in front of his parents' room and listened for a few moments, willing his thudding heart to quiet so he could hear. Finally he heard his mother's signature snore and felt at ease. At least she was in there. He didn't know what Gary's father sounded like when he slept. Probably whatever vampires sound like when they're resting in their coffins.

At the end of the hall, he glanced around one last time before ducking into the tiny doorway that led to the attic stairs. He was delighted to see that there was a rusty old hook latch on the inside of the door. A door lockable from the _inside_ was an anomaly in this house, and Jimmy affixed it just to be safe. He was sure no one had seen him sneak up here, but still—whatever happened, it would have sucked to be surprised by more drunk idiot adults looking for a place to christen their seventh marriage.

Jimmy climbed the cramped little staircase as it wound its crooked way up to the attic, hunching protectively over his sandwiches so they didn't pick up any cobwebs. When he got to the top, he found himself looking over a cluttered, dusty expanse. Heirlooms and treasures were piled everywhere, covered in dust cloths and making strange, looming shapes that gave Jimmy the creeps. It was silent. Suddenly Jimmy had the feeling that maybe he'd gotten it wrong. Maybe Gary wasn't up here after all, and he'd seen someone else in the window. Some _thing_ else.

"Gary? You up here?" he whispered, a little harsher than he meant to.

He moved a little farther into the room, picking his way down the narrow aisle of junk toward the single source of light. He had the sudden chilling thought that maybe Gary didn't want to _talk_ at all. Maybe he was hiding under one of these sheets, holding his breath, just waiting for Jimmy to get near enough to...

"Gary, I swear to God," he whispered a little harsher, beating out unnecessarily at a rather Gary-like shape.

"If you jump out at me I _will_ punch your dick off."

 

 

**GARY**

 

When the blurry figure of Gary Smith abruptly rounded the corner at his whispered summons, the boys collided beneath the armoire with a uniform grunt of shock. Jimmy stumbled back in a jumble of limbs as Gary's voice rang out in protest, sticky fingers shoving the redhead bodily to fall back hard into a covered chair. His butt landing firmly in the seat ripped at the sheet covering it, sending up a plume of dust, and suddenly they were both coughing too.

"Oh, _come on!_ James, are you _serious_?" Smith's incredulous complaint bounced off the ceiling. "What _is_ this? _Peanut butter_? Eugh!"

Gary whipped his messy hand in the air in front of him, looking down with disgust and regarding the front of his previously clean shirt, now smeared with half of Jimmy's late night snack.

Things were _not_ getting off on a good foot, here. How long had they been together? Sixty seconds? Gary's glare whipped back up to Jimmy, but the look was still slightly raw around the edges, as if he had been dozing only recently. The fact of the matter was, he _had been_. Even if he imagined he would never sleep again after the night's revelations, two hours of waiting had a way of making anyone sleepy. Especially a teenager, especially after a few drinks, and definitely when it was as late as it was now. Waiting had turned into pacing, and pacing had turned into staring at the ceiling, and before he knew it, an hour had gone by. Then, two hours. So instead of abandoning his post, Gary had pulled an unforgivingly stiff armchair out a little ways from the wall and sat by the window. Of course until boredom eventually dragged his lids down. Now, he regarded Jimmy with irritation, half a grimace pulling his lips apart and flashing his teeth as he attempted to figure out what to do with the sudden, unexpected mess.

"I stick my tongue down your _throat_ on _Christmas Eve_ and tell younot to _make me wait for you_ and not only do you take a millennium to get your shit together but then you stop for a _midnight fucking snack_ on the way? You _complete_ neanderthal."

"What? I got hungry, so what?"

"You're always hungry!" Smith exploded, frustration sprung from anxiety giving him a cruel edge. "When _aren't_ you hungry? Maybe if you weren't so hungry _all the time_ my father wouldn't have to pay quite so much money to get suits tailored to fit a _human boulder_! What's the point if you're just gonna get peanut butter on everything except in your stupid mouth?"

When hurt flickered briefly behind Jimmy's eyes, Gary clenched his jaw shut in a regret palpable enough to ache, and he guiltily looked away. Instead of saying more, he began to unbutton his shirt instead. It was ruined anyway, so Smith might as well use it as a cleanup rag. This wasn't exactly the beginning of their conversation that he had pictured. Sweet nothings felt farther away right now than Neptune.

An annoyed, huffy silence took up space between them as Gary's fingers slid down his shirt buttons, until when he meticulously finished up, he slid it off and wadded it in his palms. Noticing the remaining sandwich still in Jimmy's stunted hand was enough of a call to action as Gary needed, and he was suddenly stomping over to the chair in anger again, snatching it away, and literally flinging it across the room. He heard it stick to a piece of furniture with a wet smack some distance back, but at the moment he was beyond caring about exactly where. Jimmy's face made a rudimentary attempt at scandalized.

" _Listen_ , moron. There's _things_ that I... that I want to _tell you_ right now, things that are.. they're _important_ , but I can't if... if you... " Smith pointed an accusatory finger at Jimmy, who still sat flung back into the ghostly shape of the unwelcoming chair, peanut butter all over his chest. Gary's voice shook just enough to betray his frayed nerves, but not enough to shed his irritation. The standing teen's snarl widened into a sour grin, and he shook his head briefly then, ruffling his immaculate hair as if to clear the static. His jabbing finger curled slowly back into his stiff palm.

"Anyway, I can't do it if I'm angry. So, can you just... _change_ the _subject_ or something? I don't care _what_ it is, as long as it's not about that _idiot french impersonator,_ or about you _complaining_ that you're _still hungry_."

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

Jimmy looked mournfully at the remains of his peanut butter sandwiches. Well, so much for a shared meal and a civilized conversation. It had been _hours_ since he'd eaten. He'd been much too anxious hobnobbing at the party to make time to stuff his face.

"I made one for you too, you know," he complained, still stuck on the sandwiches. "But I guess I forgot you don't freakin' _eat."_

Gary snorted derisively and turned away, and Jimmy took the opportunity to appraise Gary's body without being seen. He did look thinner. Gaunter. Not as bad as Happy Volts-era Gary, but too close to that for Jimmy's personal comfort. His shoulder blades jutted out against the thin fabric of his undershirt like the stumps of wings.

With a long-suffering sigh, Jimmy hauled himself up out of the dusty armchair and followed Gary further into the room-within-a-room. It was obvious from the relative lack of dust and creepy ghost furniture in this hollowed-out part of the attic that Gary had been spending some time up here. Jimmy imagined him sneaking through the house like a thief in the night, ferreting his favorite things up to his nest. A secret room, both in and apart from his home, where Gary could be by himself. It was his lighthouse.

Jimmy tried to stave off the wave of feeling that realization brought on by fingering through the old drawings scattered on the table. They were the dusty yellowed drawings of a kid, probably Gary. He couldn't help the wry, affectionate grin from spreading across his face as he sifted through his step-brother's drawings. Yep, these were definitely the doodles of his budding serial killer all right.

Uh, _a_ budding serial killer, he mentally corrected himself.

He paused on the scribble of a woman with long dark hair. He recognized her from her portrait in the upstairs hall. They'd never talked about her, of course. Jimmy's instincts for pain were at least good enough to know not to broach that subject without invitation. Even in the beginning when they'd still hated each other, when he actually _wanted_ to hurt Gary, he'd never gone there. But now, without ever knowing her, he found himself mourning her. This dark, intelligent-looking woman who Gary resembled so much. Gary didn't have to tell Jimmy how she died for Jimmy to know it was tragic, and his father's fault. And he also didn't have to tell Jimmy how much he missed her. It was in every one of the thick black lines composing the buildings of unknown, imaginary cities in Gary's later drawings. It was in the straight, brittle line of Gary's spine. Contemplating Gary's loss, Jimmy suddenly felt a twinge in the dead bundle of nerves dedicated to thinking about his own father. But it passed quickly, leaving Jimmy with nothing worse than a shiver of revulsion.

Blinking out of his thoughts, Jimmy turned to look for Gary. Now he was sprawled in the armchair, chewing on his thumbnail. His knee was bouncing violently as he looked at Jimmy, obviously furious, obviously trying to figure out how to say whatever it was he needed to say.

That's right, he'd asked Jimmy to change the subject. Looking at him sprawled in the armchair, his legs spread wide, Jimmy felt heat start to pool in the base of his stomach. He imagined hooking his thumbs into Gary's belt loops and sliding the expensive fabric off his body. That would be _one_ way to change the subject.

It would also be a _huge_ mistake.

Still, there weren't any other chairs, so Jimmy found himself drifting over to Gary and lowering himself to sit in front of him. Not quite between his legs, or not as between his legs as he'd _like_ to be, but still with his forehead mere inches away from Gary's bony, jittering knee. The bouncing got more violent as Jimmy got nearer, reminding Jimmy of a cat's tail switching in warning, but Jimmy just planted his hand heavily at the top of Gary's knee to keep it still. He knew he had no right to touch him like this. He knew he was flirting with tearing down his own wall. But he still couldn't help his thumb from tracing a small, comforting circle on the inside of Gary's thigh.

"So, forget what it was you had to say? Should I go find someone to make out with so you can burst in and jog your memory? The party's still going down there, I'm pretty sure I could pull that off."

 

 

**GARY**

 

The thumb between Gary's teeth gave a sharp, hot jolt of pain when Jimmy's words naturally prompted the youngest Smith to rip into his own cuticle. He flinched, sucking down a few droplets of blood, then lowered his hand to clutch it nervously in the center of his lap. He was acutely aware of the heat of Jimmy's hand on his knee, and how after so much time not touching, those soothing fingers came off as a boon. A reward, even, for something not yet earned. When Jimmy's thumb slid sideways against the inside of his thigh in a comforting motion, it instead shot a pleasurable sensation up Smith's leg, making Gary abruptly sit up straight, shoving the offending touch off of him completely. It would be hard enough having this conversation in the first place without _literally_ being hard through it as well. He glared at Jimmy, accusing him of every crime in the known universe with a single blistering look.

" _You were right!_ " Gary abruptly barked, dropping his angry glare down to his knees. He stared at them dramatically for a few seconds, then rolled his sweaty palms across his knee caps, flexing the muscles in his twitchy fingers. His thigh still burned from the ghost of Jimmy's touch.

"You were right about everything."

It was completely ridiculous hearing himself admit that blunt proclamation. He had been sweating over it for days. _'Everything'_ encompassed a _lot_ of things, after all. And, as had been _well established_ , Jimmy was no genius. Admitting that Jimmy _wasn't_ un-salvageably terrible was enough of a challenge on it's own. But this? Jimmy right about _everything_? About not only all the things that hung wrong between them, but about the way he dressed? Or the grades he got, or his moronic morally righteous judgements, or his friendship with Petey, or even with that red haired slut from the trailer park? _Everything?_ Gary's face soured, and he sucked hard on his teeth as his doubting eyes rolled back up to examine the top of Jimmy's freckled hairline. Hopkins stared up at him with concern touching the corners of his squinting gaze, and Gary felt relieved Jimmy hadn't immediately laughed. Or gloated. Or really said anything.

"...Don't let it go to your head. _That's_ fat enough already. What's in there, pickle juice? Because it's _not brains_."

The qualifier was out before Gary could stop it, and he physically flinched when it was too late, already gone from his mouth. He couldn't suck it back in, but thankfully, Jimmy only met the insult with a mildly reproachful look. His mouth stayed closed, and Gary shook his head sharply, as if to force his negativity out like water stuck in the ear canal after swimming too many laps. He seemed to struggle internally, before cutting loose a long, frustrated groan. Sitting hard back against his chair, Gary's eyes flitted away again, unable to settle on Jimmy's confused face for too long. He stared instead at the ceiling, and ran limp fingers through his hair, pushing his bangs back from his face. Maybe if he couldn't _actually see_ the idiot, it would be... easier. _Maybe_.

The quiet stretched to an uncomfortable length. But when Gary finally did open his mouth again, it was like an ancient and terrible flood gate was finally groaning open.

"I can't figure it out, Hopkins. And _believe_ me when I say, that has _never happened to me_ before. I can't figure _you_ out. I thought I had, but _clearly_ , _that_ idea was _one big pile_ of _dog shit_. Any of this. You and me... I don't know what to do. I can't... I _just_..." Gary clicked his tongue on his thought, then sighed, still laser-focused on the ceiling. "I thought that if I put you in the ground, everything would just... go back to the way things before I met you _._ Things weren't as weird, then. _I hated you_... because I thought... _I don't know what I thought_. My head was messed up. _Too many pills_. Or maybe not _enough_ pills? I don't know. Petey wont shut his mouth about it, but I think trying to throw you off a building probably offers enough evidence, even for a _moron_ , to know that things weren't... going _too good_ for me. I _don't talk about this_. With _anyone_. But... _you've_ had the _pleasure_ of meeting my father. _You_ know."

Gary felt heat coming off of Jimmy's shoulders, close, but not close enough to touch the stretch of his legs. Memories of Jimmy at the hospital rose sharply to torture Smith with recollections of pressure, of Jimmy's face pushing close into his torso, crushing his pulped ribs too hard, the gesture forcefully willing them to fuse into a single person. What if Gary had touched him, then? Even done something as simple as touched the top of Jimmy's head? He hadn't, of course. The smell of blood, mixing with the disconcerting aroma of bleach off the clean floor, had been... too overwhelming. Petey shouted again in Gary's mind, sharp and accusatory. _'He protected you! He saved you! NOBODY has ever done that for you! It's what you've always wanted! AND YOU THREW HIM OUT LIKE THE TRASH! You IDIOT!'_

"I didn't want to give you anything. I thought that if I gave an inch, I'd lose a mile. You had already taken so much. With the wedding and... all that stuff, I went... _a little crazy._ " Gary gave a dry guffaw, still scrupulously studying the beams above them. "You can laugh at that, if you want. It's funny. But I think I hated you more after that. Because..."

The house was totally silent, so far up. All notions of other party goers, even of time and space, seemed to fade entirely into the distance. Only the creaking of the wind buffeting the window panes broke the unearthly trance of the moment, both listening, and yet not listening to it at all. Gary blinked slowly as he let the words finally fall past his lips, after so long, after everything that had happened, despite anything that could still happen.

"Because it made me realize that _I didn't_ hate you. Not at all. I mean, don't get ahead of yourself or anything, _I did_ hate you, but... I _don't_ now. Not anymore."

The truth blazed like a burning torch in Gary's chest. It burnt his mouth when the words were gone, and burnt his ears as the words rang true in the quiet. _He didn't hate Jimmy Hopkins._ It filled Gary, scorching him from the inside with a terrible kind of fear-mingled passion. When he finally leaned back down on his knees to stare Jimmy in the face, an almost desperate vulnerability lit his eyes, touched just beneath with a hue of insanity. He reached a hand down to voluntarily cup Jimmy's neck just below the ear, pulling their faces close.

"I thought if I _cut you out_ , then _none of it_ would matter. But it _did_ matter! It did. Can you _even imagine_? Try to imagine it. _Me_! Stumped _totally_ by an _idiot_ like _you_. Like this _ever_ could have happened last year. But, it did. And I _was_ , Jimmy-boy, _I really was_. And the farther I tried to push you away, the _worse_ it got. I didn't know what would happen to me after I found you with that _stupid hole_ in your _stupid stomach_. You'd think I'd be over the moon about it, huh? You _really_ have _no idea_. I'm not sure you completely _get_ this, but I feel... _fucking terrible now_. ALL the time. And not even in a _'my daddy hates me and had me committed_ ' kind of _totally normal_ misery. Do you _understand_? I'm talking about a _much bigger picture_ , here. Can you _comprehend_ what I'm _saying_? This is my _life_ , Jimmy. I can't stop thinking about you! Me, you, my father, your mother. Shit, _this place_. The only thing that makes me feel like I _won't_ be crushed by this house is _you_. Petey was right all along. I _can't stop thinking about you_ and _I don't know what to do._ "

There were no apologies, no brash declarations of _'I need you'_ or _'I miss you'_ or even _'I'm sorry'_ , but the pleading angle Gary's thick eyebrows bent up into spoke his regret louder than his voice ever could. He steeled himself for rejection and inhaled the juvenile smell of peanutbutter, Jimmy's pulse still hammering against his palm.

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

Jimmy's attention filtered in and out as Gary spoke. His dark eyes roved over Gary's face, his huge mouth, that stupid gap in his teeth. He was rambling toward something, trying to force authenticity through the emotionally deformed pathways between his brain and mouth. But it wasn't the actual words that were telling Jimmy what he needed to know. It was the light shaking in the clammy hand cupped around his scull, and the unnatural arc of his thick, scarred eyebrows - the steadily growing whine of pain that ran beneath his words. Jimmy had known where this was going when Gary lay himself back on the chair and stared at the ceiling like he was in his shrink's office. Hell, he'd known when they locked eyes at the party, Gary's eyes glassy and enervated like a junky. And now he was juddering, stumbling toward it, taking _forever_ because sincerity wasn't in his genetic dictionary. Jimmy hated this, this... struggle toward what they both already knew in their bones.

As Gary wound up his confession, Jimmy found his body flooded with anger. He shot to his feet and ripped off his stupid dress shirt, sending buttons pinging across the dusty attic. His horrible tie was still hanging loose on his neck; he wrenched it off and flung it across the room. Finally he lifted his undershirt over his head, the fabric catching briefly on the underside of his massive jaw before it too was thrown into a corner.

By the time his furious black eyes were back on Gary's face, he could see Gary's attention was already right where Jimmy wanted it. The seated boy's face was contorted in pain or revulsion, or revolted pain. Jimmy followed Gary's gaze down his torso to the ugly scar cutting across his stomach.

"This? You were _worried_ about… _this?_ A frickin' _knife wound?_ " He pinched the puckered skin between his thumb and forefinger, digging hard into the still-bruised skin around it. He wished he could just pull the scar out, the way he'd pulled out his own stitches in his bedroom, alone.

"Oh, Gary, Gary, Gary," Jimmy chided, his voice devoid of humor. "It'll take a lot more than that to kill Jimmy Hopkins. _You_ should know that better than anybody."

Locking his eyes back on Gary's, Jimmy advanced on him. He set one hand on Gary's chest, pushing him flush against the back of the armchair, then brought one knee after the other to rest around the sides of Gary's hips. Gary's hands fluttered at his sides and he could hear Gary's heart thundering almost as hard as his own. Finally, slowly, Jimmy brought both hands up to clutch the space between Gary's face and neck. Somewhere between a caress and a strangle, the gesture bespoke his fundamental ambivalence.

Shivering with fury and barely repressed desire, he crouched in Gary's lap and brought their faces inches apart, so that Gary was forced to look at him, forced to _understand_. He didn't have the words Gary did. He couldn't lie back in a chair and unspool the knotted tangle of fear and hatred, hope and desire inside himself that was labeled _Gary Smith_. All he could do was push himself up as close as Gary would let him, past the bullshit and the needless boundaries. Then maybe Gary would _see_.

"Gary. If you want to do this… if you want to be with me, _I'm in_. You gotta know that. I've always… Ever since…" he broke off for a moment, unclenching his hands from Gary's jaw, trying to force himself to relax. He could feel the waves of heat coming off his own torso, could practically see them in the drafty attic air. Gary's own pupils were blown wide as he comprehended the red gargoyle pinning him to the chair, speaking to him with such dreadful importance.

"But _you_ have to be in, too. Okay? No more bullshit. No more running away. I know you got your issues, and I don't fucking care about that. I got my own. She really got in my head, and I screwed things up with you, and I still feel really, really shitty about that… Anyway. It got ugly—but it could get much, much uglier. If we do this, you gotta be prepared for that. You gotta… you can't…"

Jimmy broke off and hung his head, his red stubble brushing Gary's chin.

_You can't leave me again._

 

 

 

**GARY**

 

Gary's hands lifted automatically to hover in the air inches off the skin on either side of Jimmy's torso. They hung there like incomplete thoughts, everything about him vibrating in tandem. Jimmy's words hung thick in the air too. They thundered in dreadful importance, making Gary's jaw clench and his eyes lid as their faces brushed.

Over Jimmy's shoulder, two versions of Gary waged a silent war. On the left side, a small, much younger version of himself glared, antagonistic and loathing. On the right side, Gary saw himself as he could be in the future, older, and clearer than he had ever been.

 _'Are you sure about this?'_ young Gary spat in the silence of the mind, full of doubting vitriol. _'It's not too late. You could still change your mind. You could use this. To hurt him, like you always wanted to. Like he always DESERVED. You could use this to put him down.'_

Older Gary tossed his hair out of his eyes and laughed, a carefree sound. ' _Why bother? Hopkinses win out in the end. It's a law of nature.'_

_'It isnt! But it could be. If you pass this gate, there's no going back. He can hurt you, you know. You're letting him. Worse than all of this. Worse than father. What if he just wants to put you on your back again?'_

_'He doesn't. He WON'T.'_

_'There's no way of knowing.'_

_'It isn't his code. Something stunted about his idiot genetic makeup won't let him do the things we can. He might even love us.'_

Gary carefully exhaled hot air, inhaling Jimmy's own radiating heat as he listened to the silent struggle, even as his fingers finally ghosted light touches across Jimmy's furnace-temperature skin. It felt amazing against his own colder touch, and he sighed. Closing his eyes, Smith butted up against Jimmy's jaw, rolling his forehead against the other boy like an affectionate cat who before would only ever scratch and hiss. His cool palms flattened, and he ran one, then a careful thumb, across the puckered flesh of Jimmy's scar, lingering to touch more with fascinated calluses.

_'Jimmy doesn't love us. He HATES us. Nobody loves us.'_

_'He's too blunt. He's not smart enough to pull off that kind of trick.'_

_'Yes he is. Don't kid yourself into thinking you fell off that roof all by yourself. Remember your scars.'_

_'You were never by yourself. He was always there. Even when you thought you had him in your teeth, you never really did. He's the one that's been watching you. Even in the asylum. He was there. He never left you.'_

_'You don't have any friends. Nobody wants to be anywhere near you. Nobody is good enough.'_

_'Jimmy is. Was. Could be.'_

Hot breath catching between them, Gary wound his fingers up to grip Jimmy by the head, pulling their faces together. They shared wet air as a disbelieving grin cut Gary's wide mouth wider. He would never be able to fully disentangle his mind from his past, but if he didn't change _something_ , the person he wanted to be would die without ever having seen the light. The two versions of himself dissipated unseen and unheard, a mere sixty second footnote to a long, and so far desperately sad story that didn't yet have an ending. Wasn't this a chance to fix things? To _finally_ find some small measure of satisfaction? Of _peace_?

Only one thing seemed to shine clearest. Jimmy was in. _Inexplicably_ , he was in. He _wanted_ Gary, when no one else in the world had the kind of fortitude needed for such a monumental task. He had laid his cards out, and all Gary needed to do was offer the same.

"You _disgust_ me." He instinctively spat.

When Jimmy jerked abruptly backward, a horrified look on his face, Gary cut loose a snort of sincere laughter.

"...I'm _kidding_ , stupid." He supplied after a scandalous beat, before pulling a bemused Jimmy back down again to crush their mouths together.

Though the attic was dark, something about finally slotting his mouth against Jimmy's after so long seemed to suffuse Gary's brain with a peculiar brightness. He felt giddy and light-headed, finding his hands suddenly too strong as he yanked Jimmy's skull down towards his own, parting his lips to run his tongue, almost worshipful, along the straight line of Jimmy's teeth. The world tilted sideways, and suddenly everything which had been wrong was right again, resonating for once in Gary's frustrating life with a certain measure of honest peace.

Once their lips touched, the hands so desperately pulling James down began to wander. They stroked first hesitantly, and then with more confidence, caressing along the broad, hot plane of Jimmy's shoulders, around to his back, and sliding down his spine, counting each vertebra even as he simultaneously counted Jimmy's molars. Somehow, he touched Jimmy now with a tenderness he had only ever reserved for dead things, or his mother's wrist, or his desk when everything had been meticulously organized. It was uniquely puzzling to feel himself move his body in such a way now, and yet it was unquestionably correct. When they broke apart for air, Jimmy regarded him with shock, his face flushed an ugly pink at the intimacy of the touch.

" _Who are you_ again?" Jimmy panted, and Gary echoed the sentiment with a breathless grin. He actually seemed to consider the question, even sucking a raw lip up between his teeth as he examined Jimmy's face.

"...I'll, uh, _get back to you_ on that one."

Gary sighed the words as he slid his hands down to cup Jimmy's ass. He squeezed, digging his fingers deep into the firm flesh, and felt his dick give a sharp, lusty twitch. A glance down between them hitched his breath in his throat, and when his gaze flicked back up, it was thick, hot, and loaded with curiosity. As if asking, _for once_ , for _permission_. He raised a thick eyebrow, and between them the expression might as well have been an entire sentence.

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

 _He's back. I have him back_. Jimmy's skin sang with pleasure and relief. He hadn't even known... he'd been holding back even from himself, somehow, how much he'd missed him. And for once it seemed like Gary had missed him too. He was different, touching Jimmy in a way he'd never touched him before... in a way Jimmy had never been touched before, actually. It was the kind of touch that came to mind when Jimmy thought of the word _lover._ It was sort of like how he was with a good girl when he was trying to get her wet, all slow and gentle and reverent. But it was different, it was like Gary _meant_ it somehow, in a way Jimmy never had before.

Gary was different now, and if Jimmy didn't know better he'd have thought he'd been practicing with somebody. (Of course, he hadn't been.) (Definitely not.) Had Gary grown so much these past weeks? Had all that sleeping just meant he was pupating into some unknown, tender creature? Not that Jim would be filing any complaints, necessarily. It felt _good_. Just, different.

When they finally broke apart, Jimmy couldn't help the comment. _Who are you again?_ Sarcasm centered Jimmy, helped him find stability and distance when he felt himself faced with something uncomfortable or unknown. Gary's affection had him off balance. He was almost unnerved with how much he liked being in Gary's arms. How pliant his own body felt, how yielding.

And then there was a hand on his ass and a raised eyebrow loaded as a shotgun.

Jimmy's guts twisted with fear and excitement. This was... unexpected. He'd never... The most he'd ever had up there was a couple of fingers. (Well, there was that one time Eunice had tried to get her whole fist up there. It had taken him a while to stop the involuntary wincing whenever she passed him in the hallway. That girl...) It was somewhat virgin territory, so to speak. He'd certainly never let a whole _dude_ in there, though not for lack of trying on their part. It wasn't that he wasn't sexually adventurous enough for it, not by a long shot. It was more an issue of control. Of trust.

He swallowed thickly, his eyes coming to rest on Gary's scarred eyebrow. It stood out more when he was aroused, the damaged skin staying white and pale against the flush. Did he trust Gary? That was a loaded question even to himself, and one he might have had a different answer to an hour ago.

He realized he wasn't sure, at the same time he realized he was nodding. A silent answer to a silent question.

Suddenly he needed something to do with his eyes and hands. He began fumbling with his belt buckle, slithered the leather strip out from around his waist and let it drop to the floor. He almost didn't want to tell Gary—he didn't want to make it seem like a bigger deal than it was, because it _wasn't_ , you know, _virginity is a social construct_ and anyway there was _virtually_ _no definition_ of the word which could include Jimmy Hopkins—but he still felt like he should say something. You know, for transparency's sake. The words almost tumbled out of him as he slipped out of his pants and boxers.

"So, funny story... I've actually never, uh. Let someone. But I-I am. I mean, I want to. I mean, I want _you_ to. Uh."

Now he was fully naked on Gary's lap, with Gary still almost fully clothed. His own dick was heavy and thick, resting on Gary's belt buckle. He felt a little stupid, a little self-conscious. But he was happy. Eager. His heart beat thick in his chest and he balled his fists on his thighs.

"How, uh... how do you want me?"

 

 

**GARY**

 

If Gary laughed out loud while Jimmy briefly stumbled around the attic floor as he removed what was left of his clothes, it was only because Smith wasn't entirely sure what else to do. Jimmy _did_ look stupid, after all. And not just right now. He tended to look stupid _most of the time_. (Doubly so when he was feeling awkward.) Gary watched from a subtle recline as Jimmy caught himself on his own pants, then threw them (horribly wrinkled, not even mentioning the peanut butter stains, just like his other discarded clothes) into a distant pile of dust. Just because Gary had finally acknowledged his affection didn't mean the perpetual voice of reason didn't still reside hidden within him. It offered a constant commentary on everything he saw, in various tones and inflections from throughout Gary's life. Right now, the voices might have been slightly closer to hysterical nervy chatter than usual, but a side effect of Jimmy removing himself physically from Gary's lap was that he could actually think in sentences.

Another side effect of getting to know the cro magnon stuck fumbling with one last rebellious sock was that, in many ways, words were becoming less and less necessary between them. Even tonight, the conversations they'd had in 5 second glances had been more meaningful than maybe the entirety of Beatrice Trudeau's Senior English final. (Gary had heard a rumor that her paper was 300 pages, and inexplicably also available in binary.) Not even to mention the physically infuriating way Jimmy had stared at Gary during seven minutes in heaven, with a kind of distant thirst that not only had Gary swallowing his own tongue, but that had him literally busting down the sitting room door minutes later to prevent Jimmy from escaping. To say that all their conversations were as rapid as this would be egregiously incorrect. But to say that _some_ of them _were_? Well, the weight of Jimmy's rapidly thickening dick suddenly poking into his belt buckle as the redhead settled back into his lap again spoke for itself. Gary's hands automatically went to clutch at Jimmy's thighs, then slid back to his ass again to pull him down, rolling up to meet him where they touched with a slowly matching hardness.

And then Jimmy's words doubled back around.

"How do I want _what_?" Gary obliviously flatlined, before Jimmy's real intentions came full circle and hit home like a dart hitting the bullseye. Surprise dilated Smith's pupils as he rapidly looked up to Jimmy's face, his hands suddenly frozen, treacherously somehow again on the globes of Jimmy's ass.

"- _oh_."

He had never _let someone_. But he... _wanted_... _Gary_ to? Somehow, for the first time?

Considering his grabby hands and the apparent life of their own, it wasn't surprising that this subject came up almost immediately. And yet, it still _was_ a surprise. Smith's mouth fell open in preparation for a vomit of words he surely could use to change something about this unreal situation. But, _what exactly was wrong with it?_ It wasn't like Gary _hadn't_ thought about that kind of sex before. He actually _had_ , quite often at that. Even before they had ever... done whatever it was they became, though Gary had masked those thoughts even to himself as implications of violence. And though they had fooled around like dogs in heat for the better part of two months, the question of penetration had always been (almost respectfully, after Gary's initial flat pronouncements of rejection) left out.

The only time Jimmy had tried to give him a finger had resulted in one of their nastier play fights. Gary had brought a fist down on Jimmy's skull, and none too gently. There was blood on the floor by the end of that night. But it had been cum on the floor two weeks later when Gary had tried the same thing on James. He thought about that now, his mouth closing without a word. And the distant possibility of being capable of hurting Jimmy when he was vulnerable brought a certain tightness to his throat that was impossible to separate from the hard jerk that followed in his boxers. They were _both_ inexperienced in something for a change. Even if Gary hadn't wanted to hurt, always, just a little bit, for now it was practically inescapable.

Gary was licking his suddenly dry lips and nodding, his brain crackling out like electricity to encompass every aspect of how the rest of their night might go. This was definitely _not_ what he had imagined he might be doing at the end of the night when he woke up this morning. Or, more accurately, _who_. His eyes shot around the room, pinging in rapid succession through scenarios and lesser ideas. It was safe here. It was dark. It was late, everyone was drunk or asleep. This was crazy, and it was dangerous, but here, right now, concealed on all sides by shadows of the past, they would be hidden. No Smith senior to barge in and offer a beating. No doctors or principals or psychiatrists to harp on the disgusting nature of their borderline actually incestuous relationship. No Petey with doe eyes full of nervy worry. Only them. A concept that a year ago would have filled Gary with tremors of revulsion. Now, it came with a careful relief.

The naked body in his lap was practically a _carte blanche_. Gary sucked his lip up between his teeth and bit it, hard enough to almost draw blood, as his excited eyes skimmed Jimmy's face for any joke, any last chance moment of regret. When he didn't find anything, he cut loose a sharp, nervous laugh and wrapped his right hand around the dick jabbing into his belt buckle. He slid it's weight up between his thumb and forefinger, then squeezed the head, fingers rolling down to clutch it on all sides. A few casual pulls had him spitting in his palm and going back for more, reveling in the wet bead collecting at the tip as he fumbled with his sore left arm to awkwardly pop his own belt buckle. He would have to ease into this. If he thought too hard about Jimmy _literally offering his body up_ as a gift of subservience, Gary would blow his load before even seeing where this might actually go.

"I _want_ you... to... tell me that you _missed_ me." The grin Gary managed to summon through clenched teeth betrayed a feverish glitter, the joke almost mocking. But _not quite._ "Say, _'Oh Gary, I've been waiting for this moment for soooo long! It's SUCH a SPECIAL time in a boy's life when he gets PLOWED for his very FIRST time!'_ Is that why you were wearing so much _white earlier_ , Jimmy-boy? Don't worry about it, it's a better look on you than orange."

After everything that had happened between them, the words remained the same but suddenly the meaning had shifted. Gary grinned, hot breath escaping through the cracks in his teeth as he worked Jimmy over in his hand, and they both knew the insults had no edge. Instead of a cruel jab, the words were a joke they now could share. A game meant to make Jimmy roll his eyes and laugh. Insult had become banter, and Smith reveled in the moment after it escaped him, savoring how good it felt to know that they could still talk to each other the way that they always had. Now that they both fully understood the context.

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

Jimmy responded by headbutting Gary in the forehead. It was a little harder than he meant to, their skulls knocking together with a sound he felt in his teeth, but any pain blended seamlessly with the pleasure of intimacy.

"Yeah right," he panted, rolling his hips up into Gary's hand. "You're gonna have to—up your hand-job game if you want any of that. Remind me why I missed such a pain in my ass."

Gary apparently accepted the challenge, because the hand that wasn't coaxing pleasure out of him snaked around to massage his ass again. Held between Gary's hands like that, he suddenly felt almost weak. He dug his fingers into the muscle of Gary's shoulder beneath his flimsy undershirt to stabilize himself, his fingers massaging and thoughtlessly mimicking Gary's motions.

Gary still had almost all his clothes on, he realized, while Jimmy was buck naked and practically writhing around on top of him. It occurred to him that he should disrobe him, dethrone him, equalize the playing field.

But.

He also wanted to follow the heat in his belly that bloomed when Gary ordered him around. Maybe now that they were, uh, together, he could afford to be a little more comfortable in their power dynamic. Let Gary take the reins for a while. _Didn't I already tell you I'd do whatever you asked me to?_ He remembered a promise given nearly a year ago and grimaced in embarrassed pleasure. The stuff that came out of his mouth when he was horny, man...

"I..."

"You?"

"I, uh..."

"You uh, uh, uh, _wha_ t. Spit it out, James."

Jimmy grabbed a fistful of Gary's hair and pulled his head back, exposing a long line of throat. He latched onto it and sucked a raw place, loving the feeling of Gary's grip spasming on his dick. He tongued Gary's skin and took it between his teeth, fiercely hoping and not hoping it left a mark.

"I missed you so _fucking_ much," he finally muttered into Gary's neck.

"There, is that what you want? I missed you, you stupid jerk. You _did_ something to me. I used to be fine, but now... For a while now, I haven't wanted anybody else."

He brought his head back up to look Gary in the eye, frowning stubbornly, still flushed with pleasure and embarrassment, and waited for another command.

 

 

**GARY**

 

" _Nobody_ else?" Gary's tone was incredulous as he met Jimmy's eyes. His entire body temporarily froze while his brain clamped down on the concept. "Seriously. _No one_?"

The idea that Jimmy Hopkins, king of campus debauchery, had somehow gone full celibate in the name of harboring feelings for his nemesis step brother seemed overtly laughable. Smith lingered on the idea, disbelieving that the words had actually spilled past lips Gary knew for a fact had toured at least half of the student body. Hell, a greater part of the last year had been devoted to dredging up stories about that very misbehavior so he could exploit it. So, was Jimmy _lying_ right now? But, what reason would he even have to lie? ( _What reasons did he ever have?_ A darker voice whispered.) Old, nameless anxieties rose up and vibrated in an unintelligible jumble, just beneath the veil.

Gary's eyebrows came together into a sharp furrow, and despite whatever about their messed up relationship that had barely been salvaged that night, some nameless bolt of old electricity still shocked Gary into action. Without warning, he shoved a palm hard into Jimmy's chest, sending him hurling to the ground. Smith was already on his feet before Jimmy had even finished grunting a loud protest, and he was circling the body on the floor like a buzzard waiting for just the right opportunity.

"... _sorry_." Gary conceded after a pause, managing with some effort to reign his reaction back in again. Jimmy glared from where he sprawled, half raised on elbows that struck a line of tension sizzling in the air between them. Maybe that hadn't been _quite_ appropriate for the mood of the moment. Smith at least had the decency to look mildly regretful for a beat, before moving on.

"I don't _believe_ you, but, I'm sorry. I'll give _that_ to you, at least." Blinking rapidly as his brain cycled through the emotions he had just experienced, Gary looked down at Jimmy's naked silhouette against the planks of the floorboard. He briefly considered helping James back to his feet, but something pulsed low and tingly in his guts seeing his old rival like that, and so in the end, he decided to leave his step brother there.

"Because whatever you were _actually_ doing, on campus, or, or... in that _gross trailer park_ , it's _over_ now. Ok? Because if you _really_ want to do this?" Gary's finger waggled between them. "Then _that's it_. We're on the _same side_. I don't _do_ things fifty percent of the way, and I _don't share_."

Gary's jittery hands wracked across his scalp, his hair already by this point long since mussed. He snarled through it again as he paced in a nervous semicircle around Jimmy's figure, his belt buckle clanking where it hung half open to pull down the flaps of his fly. Of course he knew what he was trying to say, but he hadn't quite figured out how to force himself to say it. He _knew_ Zoe's name, but even just saying it out loud felt like a betrayal. It forced him to come to terms with the fact that he was jealous, and that jealousy was just one of the many nastier emotions he had no control over when it came to Jimmy Hopkins.

"Look, I can't... _change_ or anything, ok? This is it." He slapped his chest before spreading his arms wide. "The package deal, Jimmy-boy! I can't make promises that I won't get mad at you, or that I won't try to hurt you. _I will._ I won't _think_ about it, because it just... _happens_. And despite your idiot genetic code, I think you _get_ _that_." A gesture at Jimmy's general position on the ground illustrated the point. The standing teenager's mouth pulled into a tight line.

"Yeah, psycho, I _really_ do."

Amusing. Jimmy's rebuttal only gained an eye roll before Gary continued on unperturbed, as if he hadn't even heard Jimmy speak.

"-But don't lie to me. _Never_ _lie_ , because _I'll know_. You _know_ I'll know. Girls. Boys? ...Hobos? They're _out_ of the picture now. I thought I'd be the bigger man and just... _put it out there_ before a discretion makes me want to kill you later. And despite this whole... you know... _beating-each-other-up_ thing that makes this... so..." Gary's dark gaze tracked down and lingered, heat in his eyes replacing a need for the word. "... I don't... _actually... want to_ kill you anymore. If I hadn't made that point yet."

When a lull in the mood swing finally came, settling sweet, Gary sighed. He ran the back of his still too-sore arm across his eyes and looked down again. Regret almost touched him, but not quite. Instead, he looked at Jimmy contemplatively, before hooking his thumbs under his shirt and pulling it over his head. He dropped the cloth where he stood, and squatted down to get level again. Everything about the gesture attempting to _get level_ again.

"If you gave me a hickey, I'll punch you."

_I missed you too._

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

_Never lie, because I'll know. You know I'll know._

Watching Gary prowl from his place on the floor, Jimmy was flooded with a memory. A memory he used to associate closely with Gary, but which had as of late been replaced with more immediately sensory ones.

_I know you hate me, Jimmy-boy. I know you said all that stuff about me behind my back._

The smell of basement mold and bully sweat. Gary pacing in front of him, ranting, his body propelled by paranoiac hatred, as Jimmy realized Gary had lied to him. That Gary didn't lead him to that basement needing his help—he'd lead him there to fall. The realization that the boy he'd thought was his only friend—the one who'd shown him the ropes and given him direction—had betrayed him, for no reason other than he couldn't imagine a world in which Jimmy wouldn't betray him first.

Jimmy remembered _that_ Gary as he watched his step-brother pace across the attic boards. He'd just flipped on a dime, gone from loving to violent in a matter of seconds, and he was promising to do it again. It wasn't a matter of _if_ so much as _when_ Gary would turn on him again; he'd probably decide that Jimmy was cheating on him or lying about something, and rather than talk about it just knife him in his sleep. What the _hell_ was he getting himself into, he thought, not for the first time.

"That an ultimatum?" he spat.

"What, no hickeys?" Gary scoffed. "Definitely."

"No, idiot—the part about not messing around with other people."

Gary narrowed his eyes dangerously.

"Like I said, James. I don't share."

Jimmy snorted, even though the thought of Gary feeling jealous, even _possessive_ over him sent blood straight to his cock. He tipped his head back and looked at Gary through lidded eyes.

"You ready to take on that kind of responsibility? I got _needs_ , Gary. One night a week ain't gonna cut it. That is, unless you _really_ wear me out. And so far, I gotta say... not too impressed."

Now Gary was glowering, but before he could reply Jimmy grabbed him by the arm and toppled him over his body. After a few seconds of scuffling and using a wrestling technique he'd hardly ever imagined he'd use in this sort of situation, he managed to flip Gary onto his back. Now Jimmy was straddling Gary's hips, and for a few moments he let himself just grind down against him, luxuriating in the feel of the expensive fabric on his half-hard cock.

Jimmy's grin began to fade, however, when he noticed Gary wasn't fighting back, but grimacing and rolling his shoulder. He must have jostled it in the takedown. Suddenly he was gripped with concern, and even remorse; he'd known that Gary'd been beaten again, but they hadn't talked about it. However, he wasn't sure how to handle that in the present moment—nothing to take them out of the mood like a conversation about Gary's _dad_ , and Jimmy's fierce regret he hadn't already _ended_ his _life_ —so he decided to try and take Gary's mind off the pain.

Slowly he stretched himself down over Gary's body. One hand slipped down into Gary's underwear and began massaging him, while his mouth went back to work on the place at his throat that was already starting to turn red. If he hadn't made a hickey before, he was _definitely_ going to give him one now.

 

 

**GARY**

 

Gary groaned and thunked his head back hard against the floor, though it was unclear if the troubled noise was the result of pain or pleasure. (Or both, knowing his own twisted machinations.) But when a hand raised to point at himself over Jimmy's shoulder and silently mouth _'not impressed?_ ' even an idiot could see from outer space that Jimmy's ploy had worked. Smith's brows furrowed together again, but this time with an incredulity that quickly transformed into resolve.

" _What_ do you _mean_ you're-" He sucked air sharply through clenched teeth as the hand in his quickly tightening underwear glazed something hyper-sensitive. "- _not- too- impressed_? Are you totally _blind_? _I'm_ impressive. I'm _very_ impressive!"

That kind of all-consuming ego stab was exactly the impetus needed to spur Gary once again to action. His dignity, which he held aloft at all times in constant solemnity, wouldnt survive such a rude implication. Not impressive. _Not impressive?_ The literal gall of it had Gary gagging, and in a bluster, he ripped Jimmy's hand out of his pants and shoved him hard onto his side. Immediately, Gary set to the awkward task of shoving out of his pants one-handed. Faking that he didn't have an injury would be pointless, but simultaneously, he also wasn't too crazy about the idea of extensively revealing any weakness to Jimmy, no matter how close they were. He didn't like _anyone_ knowing he was hurt, much less a person he actually cared about. Regular jackoffs could be ignored. It was the sympathy that Gary hated. So his weight went only half on his bad elbow, the rest of his counter balance existing from the momentum with which he shed his dress slacks.

When he was free again, Gary slung an angular knee over Jimmy's hips to hook him, and swung himself up until he sat with a haughty expression on his step-brother's chest. He looked down for a moment, surveying the familiar territory, except now with something incensed glittering in his eye.

"You wouldn't say I'm _not impressive_ if I had ever stopped being so _nice_ to you all the time." His thumb hooked the corner of Jimmy's mouth, pulling at it, then pushing past his teeth until he could run the fleshy pad down his molars. Gary stared, his wondering face growing shadowy as he imagined the wreck he could make out of the face underneath him. After so many nights together already, the shy, nervous touch of a beginner was fading fast. Jimmy was a _good teacher_ , somehow. And now, tonight, with the hyper charge of their unexpected reunification, all Gary's fear seemed to finally have bleed away.

"Didn't you say to me once that I could do _whatever_ I _wanted_? Remember that one, Jimmy-boy?" He let loose half a huff through a grin, his left hand going to drag over the delicate tenting cloth of his erection. "What if what I wanted to do _wasn't_ nice?"

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

Jimmy felt pinned, less by the literal weight of Gary Smith than the intent behind his stare. Gary had taken his bait, alright. This was going in a very good direction. A kind of scary direction, but an exciting one. A place he'd only let himself go during a certain type of masturbation, when he'd had to bury his burning face in the pillow to hide it even though no one was watching.

This was the way he'd imagined Gary before they'd really begun—before they loved one another—and to think that these versions could co-exist was almost too good to be true. And the idea that it was _Jimmy_ who had groomed him to this point, from cruelty through virginity and back to confidence, filled him with tremors of nervous pride. Gary was _his_ tyrant, he thought, as he swept his tongue over Gary's thumb. If he thought about it that way, it would be an easier job for his pride to let him submit.

He wasn't going to make it _too_ easy, though.

"Are you really asking? Or are you just telling," Jimmy finally said, the words coming out mangled from speaking around the thumb still plumbing his mouth.

Gary smirked down at him, a glint of the earlier mania still twinkling in his eyes.

"What do _you_ think, genius?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Jimmy thought about it for a moment. Sucking intently on Gary's thumb and wishing it was something else. Making sure Gary _knew_ he was thinking about something else.

"What do _I_ think?" Jimmy asked innocently, before biting down hard on Gary's thumb. He actually heard the crunch of skin in teeth as Gary withdrew it from between his molars, cursing. Jimmy surged up on his forearms, trying to get into Gary's face as best he could from his prone position.

"I think you're _scared,_ Gary. I think you _don't know_ what you want."

Gary watched him suspiciously, angrily, his hand clutched against his chest.

"But maybe I don't _want_ you to be nice all the time. I think we've established over the course of our _friendship_ that I don't break easy. So I say _do it—_ put your money where your big, fat mouth is and _use_ me."

He glowered up at Gary, his face burning with stubborn embarrassment. It was a delicate line of motivating Gary to action while also reassuring him of Jimmy's solidity. Gary both did and didn't want to hurt him; Jimmy both did and didn't want to get hurt. All he knew is he wanted Gary to take control and then _lose_ it—he wanted Gary to want him so much he forgot his own name.

"If I don't say stop, you don't gotta stop," Jimmy finally said, quietly. Gary didn't _want_ his permission, surely, but maybe he needed to hear it anyway.

"I'll let you know if it's too much. That is, _if_ you can—"

" _Shut_ up."

Jimmy's mouth snapped closed obediently as Gary's hand shot to his throat, pinning him back down to the floor. He swallowed nervously, felt his Adam's apple pushing up into Gary's palm. Gary lowered his furious face to hover over him, so close that his bangs brushed Jimmy's freckled forehead.

" _Bad_ dog," Gary growled.

 

**GARY**

 

The throat beneath his palm was full of Jimmy's erratically beating heart, and Gary tightened his grip experimentally. He liked the way Jimmy's face flushed, constricted air blocking in his windpipe. It felt good. He _knew_ that it _would_ , considering all the times he had fantasized about wrapping his fingers around this exact throat, but in reality it came with a kind of quiet power that suffused Gary with a sense of rightness. This was where they belonged. Both of them in their place, and somehow both of them finally accepting everything that came with that. Smith let out a quiet bark of triumphant laughter, his fingers squeezing marginally harder. Several tense moments throbbed between them, their eyes locking, until Gary finally released Jimmy's throat, sitting up with a huff. The sharp gasp Jimmy gave as he inhaled again went straight to Gary's cock, and he fumbled a moment with his white boxers, before simply yanking the hem down and pulling out his offending organ over the elastic band, heavy in his fingers.

"Don't say _'stop'_ ," Smith sing-songed breathlessly, fisting his hard on with a few agonizing jerks. "If you _want_ me to _come on your face_? _Then_ tell me to stop. IF you _actually_ want me to stop, you're gonna have to do much better than that. What abouuuut...? _'I want to sniff Alegernon's dirty gym shorts_ '? Or, is that one too obvious? How about... _'Russel is a genius_ '? _Nobody_ would say that, _not even_ you."

What was it about all of this that made the world seem to burn a little... _more brightly_? Colors heightened the dark attic around them as an unusual medley of endorphins flooded Gary's brain with a cocktail of suddenly very good feelings. Their chemistry had always been dependent on a certain tension. That was undeniable. (Maybe just a simple predilection for violence, even?) But Gary wasn't stupid, and he didn't kid himself over some of the dominant reasons he had discovered wanting Jimmy Hopkins in that kind of way in the first place. He had always liked to hurt, enjoyed the mystery of peeling a person apart layer by layer, but it wasn't until he had met Jimmy that some of the biggest questions about his preferences began to be supplied with answers.

Normal sex not only disinterested Gary, but even the mere concept of touching an average person _still_ filled him with intense feelings of discomfort and dislike. Touch, in Gary's world, was almost all of the time unwanted and unwelcome. Now, Jimmy appeared to be the only anomaly in Gary's orbit. (Though the occasional friendly tussle with Pete sometimes presented itself as _'not unforgivably disgusting'_ either.) But unlike with Petey, when Jimmy shoved him, when Jimmy pushed and prodded at the vanguard of his physically and mentally protective barriers, Gary _liked_ pushing back. Now, the constant _push-pull_ they had been navigating throughout their relationship seemed to have arrived at the most logical conclusion. Cutting out all the extraneous bullshit and _simply asking_ to be hurt. They had both been pleading that same request to one another for a while now, but never as clear as this. Never as transparently guiltless.

It was _so simple_. Gary's breath came heavier in his chest as his hand picked up the pace, examining Jimmy's subtly suspicious face. Why had it taken so long to understand this was something Gary should have always wanted? He had read enough books to realize this kind of thinking already existed as some sort of bizarre adult fetish, but then, he had never been one to think about things in terms of comparisons. Gary didn't _want_ to think about this new development with Jimmy as anything other than exactly what it was. It was a _challenge finally worth taking,_ an ego boost, and a gift of power, given freely. It was active subservience to the concept that Gary _wasn't_ something to be pitied. He wasn't just the sum of one too many pharmacological accidents, or one too many knocks to the head from his miserable father. Jimmy was the only person on this shitty earth saw him for _who he truly was_ , and was asking him to do the things he would have _wanted_ to do anyway, but had always been too jaded to actually take seriously. And weirdest of all, it put them, _finally_ , on a bizarrely level playing ground.

Breath came quick and shallow down Gary's throat as he stared down at Jimmy, his hand working himself over now fast and hot. He was already leaking over his knuckles, and grit his teeth as he forced himself to slow down. If he was going to blow his load, it _wouldn't_ be on Jimmy's chest. Instead, his right hand shot out to clench the redhead's jaw, pinching forcefully until his stubborn teeth once again pried apart. It only took a second to guide his dick past those long-suffering lips and he was pushing hard down Jimmy's throat, thrusting low so that the slick underside of his shaft rubbed along the hot pebbled surface of Jimmy's tongue.

" _DON'T swallow_." The demand came harsh, much thicker in his windpipe than Gary had anticipated, even as he shoved Jimmy's skull down to the ground, forcing him to take what was being served without mercy. Permission granted or not, soon the sloppy, hot sensation of being swallowed by the tender, oh-so-rippable flesh of Jimmy's throat seemed to tear everything else away, except for the two of them. They were alone in the world. No one else existed, or ever even had. The other boy's garbled choking was much more than enough to finally tip an already too-volatile Gary over the edge, and in no time at all, he was coming hard and fast as a keening groan cutting past his tightly clenched teeth.

There was something infinitely satisfying, Gary realized after a long moment of recovery, about telling Jimmy to do something and realizing he had done it. Gary carefully extracted himself from Jimmy's mouth and watched in borderline insane fascination as the other boy valiantly attempted to hold the load he'd just caught in his mouth. He looked flustered and furious, like a child in time out still too young to realize they could actually leave the chair in the corner if they tried. The look instantly un-clenched Gary's jaw and had him grinning, before lifting up on his knees and rolling Jimmy over hard onto his stomach. The force of the shove physically pushed air up through his lungs and Hopkins spat half a mouthful of come in a disgusted spurt out across the dark brown floor boards.

" _Mad yet_?" Smith chided, brimming overwhelmingly with disbelieving enjoyment. He sat roughly back down on the small of Jimmy's back and reached his good hand up to swab what was left of his own come out of the redhead's mouth. Without letting Jimmy breathe, without giving him any chance to recover from what had just happened, a hard palm was shoving his shoulder back down into the floor, as his come-coated fingers slid down to prod experimentally at the pucker of his asshole. It was a strange sensation at first, even vaguely disgusting, and for a few tension-loaded seconds Gary's knuckles froze as he wondered, if he, truly, would be able to pull this off. But when his fingers pushing in too roughly caused the human boulder beneath him first to jerk as if in pain, and then whine, Gary bit his lip and kept going.

" _Want me to stop_?" Gary whispered by Jimmy's ear, delighting in the way his step-brother's face was beginning to turn a blustery red. From the tone of his voice, however, it was clear that Gary had no intention of stopping, even if Jimmy tried to shove him off.

"Because I'll stop if you _can't take it._ "

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

Jimmy stared through watering eyes at the spit and cum cooling on the floorboards. He felt the coat of cum still on his tongue, that for some reason he still hadn't swallowed. His throat and mouth felt savaged and raw. He could barely process what had just happened, it had all been so fast. And as he felt Gary's fingers push into him, his guts twisted in fear that his insides were about to get the same treatment.

Gary was everywhere, on him and in him, taunting him, _daring_ him to tell him no. Jimmy thrashed an elbow back at Gary's chest, shifting some of his weight off him so he could breathe, but said nothing. No stop, no go, no _fuck you, Gary._ Just a brief outburst of anger and ego before a savage twist in Gary's fingers reigned him back in.

Gary's fingers were _in_ him... his brain was short-circuited, he couldn't process the feeling of being penetrated. And he could feel Gary's eyes dancing across his face, drinking in the discomfort, which just made it worse. He wasn't _ready_. His body was confused between sensation and command.

"Canmfallonow?" Jimmy mumbled, trying not to writhe too much around Gary's hand. His sphincter was clenched way too tight around Gary's fingers and it hurt to move, hurt when Gary's fingers moved, everything _hurt_.

"What was that? I'm afraid you'll have to speak up," purred the voice from behind his ear. Jimmy shifted the gob of remaining cum and spit to the side of his cheek, felt some of it dribble out of his mouth as he spoke.

"Can I fwallow now?"

Suddenly he felt Gary's fingers slip out of him, leaving his ass feeling open and shocked with cold. In a moment Gary's hand was pressed close against his mouth. Jimmy could smell himself on Gary's hand, a sharp, almost bitter smell.

"Spit," he said. Jimmy spat.

The hand disappeared from his view again, and then he felt those fingers plunging back into him, wetter and stickier and deeper than before. They forced a groan out of him from deep in his belly, made his fingers and toes curl against the floorboards.

Jimmy propped himself up on his elbows, his head hanging low as he grimaced and writhed through Gary's ministrations. He was beginning to feel something deep inside that Gary wasn't quite reaching. Something which pulsated and twitched, and felt impatient to be touched. He began rocking himself backward onto Gary's hand, trying to force his fingers deeper.

But then he felt Gary's hand slither out of him again. Jimmy whined in displeasure. He had just been starting to like it, starting to get hard in earnest again. Before he could complain, however, he felt Gary's knees brush up against the back of his legs, and felt Gary's dick, already hard again, resting hot against the cleft of his ass.

"Guess you haven't heard of a refractory period?" Jimmy couldn't help but comment.

"Whatdid you say, freak?"

"Nothing. Come on already, get on with it."

"Get on with what?" Gary asked innocently, and Jimmy felt the tip of his cock lining up against his hole, pressing gently against it. It made his breath hitch in his throat, but went no farther in.

"Come on, Gary, don't be a tool."

" _Say it._ "

Jimmy's face burned with anger and shame. He sunk his head onto his forearms before muttering,

"Fuck me."

"Sorry?"

"You heard me, you _dick_. I sai—"

The rest of that sentence turned into a strangled cry as he felt Gary push into him. His hips buckled inward toward the floor, trying reflexively to get away but Gary chased him down, slowly pushing further in. It felt like his flesh was being ripped apart, stretching out around Gary's cock. Meanwhile Gary's fingers dug savagely into his hips, steadying him out, drawing him closer. It was one of the most painful and overwhelming sensations he'd felt thus far in his life, and he felt a sob catch in his throat, threatening to break out.

Still. No way in hell was he about to tell Gary to stop.

 

**GARY**

 

_You're hurting him._

Gary's warring consciences returned to whisper the words, in varying tones and inflections. They echoed, bouncing around in his skull as he grimaced at the unyielding tightness suddenly gripping him harder than he had expected. Jimmy was a vice. He was clamping down now with no small amount of pressure, in a way that was making progress extremely hard, if not borderline impossible. Why was this so _difficult_? Gary hadn't thought it even _could_ be. A grunt of frustration cut past Smith's lips and he went to drag his forehead along the arc of Jimmy's spine, stopping and pressing low as sweat gathered between the places where their skin touched. Like everything about him, Jimmy was stubborn even with this.

Beneath him, the redhead's body trembled in unknowable patterns. It felt like every fiber in him had bent itself to the absurd task of absolute submission, regardless of literally any of the physical ramifications. The idea was both horrible and wonderful, like knowing he indeed _was_ inflicting pain. Strangely, the bizarre behavior was Hopkins to the letter. His stubbornness was insurmountable, and if backing up his word meant letting Gary literally rip him apart, well then... so be it.

_You're hurting him._

Again and again the concept echoed as Gary jerked his hips forward, eliciting a stifled gasp from Jimmy that he felt in his stomach more than not. He rolled up again only to grab Jimmy by the back of the neck, scruffing him like a dog.

 _Good._ the duplicitous thought countered. _He deserves it_.

Everything was too tight. Sharp prickles of pain shot up to Gary's gut as he pulled out, tacky skin dragging and catching unpleasantly. He grit his teeth, willing himself to go on, still too lost in the thick of his own sick pleasure at the idea of Jimmy in pain.

_This is what you wanted. He ASKED you for this._

_He doesn't deserve this. He won't tell you no. He'll let you tear him up and throw him away._

_He knows what he did. He took EVERYTHING. The school, Petey, your reputation, your dignity, and your peace of mind. He can take this, at least._

_When did you -ever- have peace of mind? You're crazy. Crazy people don't get those things. Remember?_

The beast that had always existed just beneath the surface in Gary's mind rose snarling in defense. It was the thing that he kept _almost_ at bay on most good days, but that would, hauntingly, perennially, forever burble up again and creep through the cracks of his habits and his thought _s._ It came for him when he wasn't being careful. Or when he was beaten, down low. It was the thing behind him, the shadow that made him pace in angry circles, and shove people to the ground only to laugh at their terror and hurt. Now, it cried for Jimmy's blood. To truly savage him in a way he _knew_ that he _could_ , like he had tried to do that night on the roof, the furious lightning storm echoing the blackness of his own mind. Jimmy deserved to be punished for all he had done. Not just for the school, for any of last year, but for the infinitely more insidious crime of making Gary love him, when no one in the world had ever managed that feat, except perhaps for the dead-eyed woman with long hair in the portrait in the upstairs hall.

 _"Why don't you stop me?"_ Gary demanded, angry suddenly at Jimmy for doing what he asked. For FINALLY coming to heel. For letting this violence go on while wearing that look on his face, still smeared in the corner with cum from Gary's first act of terrorism, somewhere half lost between miserable nausea and arousal. He bucked sharply forward, yanking back hard on Jimmy's hips, and when the boy beneath him let out an actual sob, Gary felt it like a bolt of venomous fire shooting up through his body, all the way to the tips of his hair. With an infinitely pained bark of frustration, he yanked wetly out and fell back on his hands.

For long seconds, Gary sat with his dick glistening as it listed to the side, breathing hard, his eyes on the ceiling. The beast receded, tucking itself neatly back into the small, dark nook in Gary's mind from which it had sprang. And then it was gone. His lip twitched in a shadow of a snarl as he felt it leave, hoping that, this time, it would stay gone. He knew that it wouldn't, but the wish remained the same.

When Gary lowered his head again, he saw that Jimmy had craned around to level him with a confused look. Or, as confused as his boulderish jawline allowed him to look with a face covered in spunk. (And now, apparently, wood burns.) It was an accusatory look that seemed to scream, _'what the hell is your problem?'_ which, to be fair, was a question Gary received almost on a daily basis. He blinked, his mouth slightly parted as he let his beating heart slow, and his sweat-slick skin cool. He licked his dry lips and shook his head, once, twice, answering the unspoken question. ' _I don't know._ '

Even if Jimmy had _invited_ him to do it, actually ripping him apart would hurt them. Both of them. Gary had never needed someone before, but now that he did, he knew it would be the beginning of coaching himself through a new way of thinking. He could never let the monster out. But then, he couldn't keep it locked away either. He would have to learn to control it.

When Gary climbed wearily back to his knees, he slid forward again without a word. He didn't want to tell Jimmy how close he had gotten to touching fire. He couldn't explain it, and he _didn't want to_ , though if he had tried, he suspected Jimmy would have at least attempted to listen. Instead, he pushed back his sweat-soaked bangs with a careful hand, before bringing it down to spit in his palm. He swabbed saliva around in his mouth and spit again, before this time reaching out to pull Jimmy up on his hands and knees. Not with claws, but only a strong touch, committed in it's direction.

"Ready?" Gary offered the rough word as a boon, almost an apology hanging in the hot air, but _not quite_. This was _far_ from being over. He waited until Jimmy shifted his head in a fumbling kind of acquiescence, before slicking his dick with spit and pushing slowly back in.

If it was possible, Jimmy felt _hotter_ , this time, and the motion dragged out of Hopkins a breathless, hissing noise not quite a moan, but not a sob either. He had always had an unusually high body temperature, acting as part furnace in an annoying way that made Gary shove the lunkhead's arm off his chest when he inevitably would fall asleep after shooting off a few. Now, it seemed all the blood had rushed to his stupid extremities after his initial battering, and sliding into him now, eased by the new slick of spit, felt like lowering slowly into a too-hot bath. Gary let his eyes slide closed and let out a sigh. If either of them were going to survive this night, Jimmy at the very least, would need to relax enough to actually let Gary in.

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

Jimmy glared down at his hands, absolutely loathing how white-knuckled they were against the attic boards. Between his fingers was a stain, faintly shining, of skin oil and other wetness from where his face had ground against the floor.

 _Relax_ , he commanded himself, and heard the word too loud and whole in his thoughts. _Relax_. The word felt solid, unyielding, like a rock in his shoe or some stubborn component that refused to break down in his chemistry set. _Relax_ , he told his knuckles, which responded by clenching harder.

Gary was pushing into him again, much slower this time. He'd done his part. Calmed himself down, made adjustments. He was actually being patient, waiting for Jimmy to sort his own shit out. And Jimmy was trying so hard to let him in. Trying harder than he could remember having to try for something in a long time. He wondered briefly, treacherously, if there was something wrong with him that was making this impossible. If they kept going, if something might... break. He dispelled that idea with a shake of his head. He was Jimmy Hopkins, damnit. He'd been beaten, bludgeoned and stabbed. He could take a stupid dick.

And yet... every muscle in his body was clenched to the point of trembling, from his legs and ass up through his chest, arms and neck. He already felt exhausted and nervy just from round one. He'd known it would be difficult but... he'd had no idea just how hard it would be. To let go, let his partner in enough for either of them to enjoy it. Apparently Jimmy had layers and systems of self-protection that went way deeper than he thought. That, or his ambivalence about trusting Gary was functioning on a biological level. Usually when he decided he wanted to do something, he just did it. Just deciding he wanted this wasn't enough. This was much harder. This was like trying to unlearn every lesson his hard-fought life had taught him thus far.

The only thing that helped was when he heard and felt Gary sigh against him. It worked on him physiologically. It wasn't meant for him, wasn't personal to him, but still acted as an animal reminder to breathe out. Signals were bouncing through invisible pathways from Gary's body to his, connecting them, giving him direction. Telling him things he couldn't admit to needing to hear.

So he sighed, too. Like a child mimicking his father. And he felt better.

He shifted his attention back to Gary. The more he focused on him, his movements and sounds, the better he felt. He closed his eyes and felt Gary's hands on his hips. Not holding him tightly but just resting there, helping to hold himself upright by tethering them together. Suddenly he remembered the way Gary had touched him earlier, in the chair. So soft and strange, his fingers fluttering over Jimmy's skin. Even the memory began to unwind something in him and he began to take bigger breaths, take longer exhales. Slowly opening, flesh relaxing.

It must have worked because he heard a sound come out of Gary then, a quiet grunt as he was able to work his way deeper. The sound sent a twitch of life to Jimmy's cock, which had gone mostly flaccid. Gently he began to rock backward onto Gary, experimenting with motion. Gary seemed to let him, the grip on his hips tightening enough to keep them anchored together. Having Gary in him, moving in him, felt much better than before. Not exactly great, yet. But it was a start.

It was strangely disturbing to him for Gary to be so close, but so out of reach. Even though he was literally inside him, Jimmy's head and hands were so furiously far away. It would have helped him to be able to lose himself in the sensory experience of him, take his mind off the discomfort. Since he couldn't force that contact himself...

"I, uh—" he started, then broke off to suck up some drool that was threatening to fall to the floor. He wiggled his hips a little to shake them out, felt Gary's cock and hips move a little with him.

"I'm trying to relax enough to—I just... could you, I dunno... just talk to me? Or touch me? Just help me get out of my head a little."

He wasn't totally sure what he was asking for, exactly. Where or how he wanted to be touched, or what he wanted to hear.

Admitting he wanted— _needed_ —Gary's help was a blow to his pride, not to mention a real risk given his recent volatility. But it was worth it. He wanted this. He really, _really_ wanted this, way more than he'd realized or cared to admit. Exactly why, he wasn't sure-which was one of the reasons he hadn't answered Gary's outburst, some of the others being annoyance, pride and surprise. He hadn't stopped him because he _didn't want to_. It was different, somehow deeper than pure sexual impulse.

He needed this, and Gary needed this, and Gary had apparently decided he wasn't going to get it by force-which in a really fucked up way might have been easier for both of them. They were together but still frustratingly apart, and tearing down this wall would take the both of them.

 

 

**GARY**

 

Somewhere deep in his chest, Gary cut loose a low growl at Jimmy's words. Frustration spiked when he realized the request hadn't induced what he hoped it would. Normally, when Jimmy begged, even if it was admittedly performative, it was enough to get Gary where it counted, thickening his dick and whetting his appetite for more. Now, the words hurt him in a way he hadn't expected. Jimmy wasn't begging. He was _pleading_ , and somehow, it made a world of difference.

This wasn't some fucked up sex game anymore, like the (actually _somehow enjoyable_ ) games they had played to get their rocks off without thought, spread out on the moth-eaten mattress in the lighthouse. This was infinitely more important, and the weight of it had Gary gritting his teeth. His shoulders went rigid as he recalled how they had touched earlier, pressed together in the armchair. So much had happened already, in such a short amount of time, and yet hearing the wavering frustration in Jimmy's voice sunk his point home better than any conversation they'd had thus far. Jimmy's stupid, fumbling sentence pleading for assistance was not only about making this easier for them, but for Gary the request read as something worse. It was, almost l _aughably_ so, like Jimmy was asking him to behave _more humanly_. To do the things that Gary _could only guess_ normal lovers did, though he didn't have anything else to compare their experience to. It was a strange dichotomy, to _want_ to hurt and yet _not_ want to. To want to _be_ hurt, and _not want_ to be hurt. For him, there was only this moment, and how fragile indeed it really seemed to be.

Jimmy scraped his knee forward a few inches and Gary groaned when he slid in fractionally deeper, his fingers automatically sliding to dig into the flesh of Jimmy's ass. Smith was still hard, though undeniably feeling slightly battered, and the tiny headway made from the angle adjustment was just enough to pull his head back down out of the storm clouds. If Jimmy needed some _assistance_ , Gary's foggy thoughts echoed from increasingly far away, he supposed he could at least _give it a try._

What did people do to each other to make them feel good? What approximation of regular human touch could he attempt in the name of giving Hopkins a generous moment's respite? Smith frowned, sucking a lip up between his teeth as he experimentally slid his palm up Jimmy's spine, before pushing forward, leaning harder into the redhead beneath him. Soon, his stomach laid in a hot flush across Jimmy's lower back. Gary's hand moved farther up, twined his fingers around Jimmy's shoulder, his thumb briefly digging into the thick muscle he found, then rolled his palm across the back of his neck. He didn't scruff James again, but instead chose to slip the touch around until he could feel Jimmy's adam's apple bobbing as he breathed. The way he felt Jimmy tense beneath his touch had them both dwelling on what had happened only recently, when Gary had chosen to squeeze there instead of caress. He let the tension dwell, the threat of force lingering only in thought.

"I _like it_ when you beg me." The words came out much harsher than Gary had expected, thick and low as they caught in his throat, and on instinct he reached beneath them with his left hand to carefully take hold of Jimmy's dick. It was heavy, and hot in his hand. He knew Jimmy wasn't actually begging, knew that he _needed_ this, but putting it that way made things easier. For both of them. When he spoke again, it was nothing more aggressive than a hot whisper.

"...Say _'pretty please'_ and I'll forget about how _pathetic_ you are right now."

Wrapping his fingers more firmly around Jimmy's cock, Gary used the leftover slick of his spit to begin jerking it in earnest, in short, tight strokes. He had watched Jimmy use this technique on himself during one of their more voyeuristic encounters, and he swallowed a little smirk when he felt Jimmy's knees shift wider apart to make room for him. It didn't feel as fake as he thought it would, to give Jimmy what he wanted. It didn't feel like a defeat. It didn't even feel like _an unmerited gift_ , which was what Smith had always feared. In fact, after a few more pointed strokes earned him a half-choked moan, Gary wondered if he wasn't learning a new lesson here. He _wanted_ Jimmy to get tangled up. To get lost and furious, dripping in his hand. Smith liked to think that what he did to James was enough to get the job done, if not performing above and beyond. But it hadn't ever been like this. Nothing they had ever done was _anything_ like this.

Shifting suddenly forward with his knees, Gary pushed even deeper still, until he had at long fucking last, _fully_ hilted himself in Jimmy's ass. The sensation was temporarily overwhelming, and when the white stars cleared, Gary caught the tail end of a groan he realized moments too late belonged to the both of them. His stroking fingers turned vicious again when the sensation prompted him to grab the nape of Jimmy's neck and shove his face back down into the floor boards, rocking forward to grind further, farther, harder. He shoved his right hand hard into Jimmy's spine, keeping him pressed solidly to the ground, even as his cock forced Jimmy's ass higher, bending him almost to the point of breaking.

" _ssssssshit_ ," The word all but hissed past Gary's teeth like steam escaping a tea kettle. He forced himself to inhale, even as Jimmy clenched pleasurably around him, pulled wider, now almost seeming to draw him deeper inside. He shoved down harder on Jimmy's back to press himself still closer, before a second thought made him grab Jimmy's right arm and twist it back until his wrist pressed tightly into his spine. Slowly, almost agonizingly so, Gary drew out, then slid back in to the hilt in a single rough stroke. The motion jarred them both to the bone, except this time the groans the motion produced had Gary grinning through clenched teeth.

 _Fuck_ , was this what he had been _missing out on_ , all this time? Was this _one disgusting activity_ he had only ever allocated to the part of his brain reserved for unwanted bodily functions _actually_ good because it was, inherently, _actually good_? Or was it only good because it was a byproduct of the struggle he shared with his miscreant, sexually deviant, infuriatingly stubborn idiot step brother? Another sliding withdrawal left him breathless, and soon the hot, shallow thrusts his body automatically began volunteering had any deeper thoughts quickly floating away.

Gary released Jimmy's arm in favor of brushing his hot palm across the side of other boy's face in what threatened to be an almost loving caress.

"...I _wanted_ to... to _do this to you_ since... the... _the first day_ I saw you at the church." Gary's fingers clenched down on Jimmy's neck again, tight, but this time far from deadly. "I can't _believe_ I missed a _Hopkins_."

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

Jimmy grinned, at least on the side of his face that wasn't smushed into the floorboards. The palpable disappointment in Gary's voice was a nice touch.

"Well, what took you so freakin' long?" Jimmy croaked.

Gary just growled, and Jimmy felt his hand shift to claw at the scruff of his neck again. _That_ move definitely made his dick twitch. It embarrassed him how much he liked being pinned to the floor beneath Gary's full weight. Having Gary's hands or elbows digging into him, forcing him down. Possessive. Controlling. Qualities he generally found unattractive in the full light of day now had his face burning with anger and arousal. It was hard to tell the difference with Gary sometimes. OK, all the time.

"I'm just saying," he clarified. "I told you the first night I'd do whatever you told me to. You coulda just told me to bend over, saved us both some trouble."

He could feel Gary's laughter vibrating through his spine, sending a warm sensation throughout his lower belly. Now he felt lightheaded, with pleasure but also elation at having succeeded. There was nothing wrong with him. Well, other than the _obvious_.

Getting fucked still hurt in some ways, but now that was mostly from Gary's violent, erratic manhandling. Together they'd gotten him past whatever masculine mental roadblock was keeping him from accepting this. Now his ass was relaxed, open. Where every muscle had been clenched and shaking before, now they were electric and warm. The sensation of having Gary inside him, the ridges and ripples of his cock rubbing wetly in his insides, was starting to feel pretty _fucking_ good, despite his own dick being left abandoned. He could feel it throbbing against the cold floor as cum was pushed slowly out the head from where Gary's cock was nudging his prostate. It was bizarre, feeling cum ooze out without having had an orgasm. Which, speaking of—

He shifted his weight onto one shoulder, trying to reach down under himself to his cock. Suddenly he felt his arm twisted up his back again, his face crushed back to the floor. Gary took the opportunity to push in deeper than even before, drawing out an embarrassingly loud moan.

"And what do you think you're doing?" Gary purred into his ear. His fingers tightened over Jimmy's wrist, pulse hammering against his palm.

"Come on," Jimmy whined. "Gary _please_ , if you're not going to—then let me."

"Not going to _what_ , exactly? Use your words, Hopkins."

Jimmy beat his forehead against the floor in frustration. He was suddenly aware of the obscene, wet, sucking sound when Gary thrust in and out of him.

"Please, Gary... come on, just touch me. You wanted me to beg, well congratulations—this is me freakin' begging."

He paused for a second, the sound of his own heart beating loud in his ears. He couldn't believe he was saying this.

"I want to cum, Gary, please... _pretty_ please."

 

 

**GARY**

 

It was a substantial challenge not to let on how Gary's tongue always seemed to swell in his mouth, how words gummed up in his throat and stuck there unspoken, every time Jimmy deigned to _actually beg_ him for something. It was an absurd Achilles heel for Gary, who _knew_ , to a certain extent, that it could be used against him. And yet it always managed to satisfy something primal, like bearing a stretch of vulnerable throat to a predator, that had Smith pushing harder, breathing harder, running hotter, and surging forward with untoward strength as sweat collected beneath his hairline and across his chest.

Sarcasm was abandoned as abruptly as Jimmy's words spurred Gary on, his hips driving faster. Soon, the mounting sensation of thrusting into the hot body beneath him had Gary growling again, though this time with dramatically less nuance or meaning. Logic was quickly stripping away from his actions, only to be replaced by the blunt physicality of chasing his own pleasure. The rest of the world was rapidly receding into the distance, a mere footnote to the grander purpose of this one moment.

" _hnn! - Stop_ talking!" Smith managed to grate, before shoving roughly forward hard enough to roll Jimmy onto his side. With callused hands, Gary pulled one thick, freckled thigh up across his chest as they re-positioned on the dirty floor, and turned his mouth to the side to temporarily suck a line of sharp, biting kisses along the underside of Jimmy's knee cap. If James continued to beg now, after they had finally established an acceptable rhythm, Gary would _definitely_ blow his load. He accepted grudgingly that tonight wouldn't be his best performance. _(Not by half,_ if he was _really_ going to be brutal with himself.) And the only thing reigning him in at the present moment was his very recent orgasm. Having his his pipes initially cleared out had offered the only assistance he could actually benefit from in a moment like this. And even now, things were quickly becoming overwhelming again.

Pulling Jimmy's leg up into such a different angle allowed Gary deeper entry, and he let himself breathe hard through parted lips as he thrust in, grinding down when he met resistance somewhere far inside. Jimmy's chest was sweat beaded, dirt and dust from the attic floor smeared in brown streaks through the first kisses of his chest hair. Gary reached a thoughtless hand out to smear through it, collecting moisture in his palm, before running that hand up the side of Jimmy's neck until he clutched at the nape of his skull, pulling him forward to meet his thrusts. Things got dicier when that same hand drifted down again to take hold of Jimmy's cock, and in a brutally short amount of time, the situation dramatically elevated.

"Oh, _fuck_!" Jimmy spat as he twisted beneath the touch, arching his spine and flipping involuntarily over onto his back. Gary doubled down, bending Jimmy's leg down over his stomach, even as he felt the other boy's powerful calf yanking him in, almost a vice around his shoulders.

Smith's face darkened as his sweat-soaked bangs fell forward into his flushed face. "I'm... gonna..."

Jimmy's head shook roughly from side to side as one of his fists came hard down into the floorboards, shaking the nearby furniture. When his free arms realized their autonomy and stretched above his head, Gary groaned and looked away from how the muscles in his torso twisted, instead letting his head drop down to hang close enough to let the tips of his bangs brush in infuriating tickles across Jimmy's ribs. He pushed forward in quick, shallow thrusts, alternating occasionally with a deeper, harder shove that had them both groaning, toes curling against the wood. During those thrusts, Gary's fingers slid down to the base of Jimmy's dick and squeezed viciously, even this close to the end refusing to let Jimmy beat him to the punch.

" _Not... without me..._ " Gary snarled, too close to maintain any pretense of civility.

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

Jimmy was wild-eyed, the whites of his eyes flashing in the dim light as they rolled in his skull. The lower half of his body was on fire with sensation wholly unlike anything he'd felt before. He was bruised, pulped, stretched to the point of torn under Gary's onslaught. But it wasn't just the pain that frightened him—it was the _pleasure_ that was suffocating him, addling his senses. On his back, he could see now to verify that semen was oozing out of his cock despite the fact he _still_ hadn't cum, dripping over Gary's fingers in their vice-like hold. His dick had barely been touched but it was throbbing thick in Gary's hand with a need for release that made Jimmy sick, the sensation compounding with every merciless thrust against his prostate.

It was _fucking_ terrifying, and half of his instincts were still screaming at him to punch Gary in his _fucking face_ so he could just get away, just run from this cliff edge they were hurtling toward together. It was too much, too fast, but Gary was relentless in chasing his pleasure, black-eyed, thrusting into him with pupils blown and fingers like claws. Animal feelings and animal fear gripped Jimmy, and in turn his legs gripped Gary, their combined sweat making his heel slip along Gary's back. Above his head, Jimmy's hands scrabbled and gripped at some broken, dusty leg of furniture. His biceps throbbed as he gripped just to anchor himself, keep himself strong so he wouldn't interfere with Gary's pleasure as he used Jimmy's hole to fuck himself out.

He wanted this to go on forever, and he wanted it to never have started. There would be other times, he promised himself, giving himself permission to let this end. He would be stronger, better, able to take more and more of what his horrible lover had to give. For now he needed to—he needed _Gary_ to—

"Gary, _please_ ," he sobbed, and somewhere above his head a furniture leg splintered in his fists. "Jesus, _please_ Gary, cum in me... I'm _yours,_ you psycho, just _take_ it."

 

 

**GARY**

 

The words were barely past Jimmy's lips when Gary released the base of Jimmy's dick and sucked back a gasp at their mutual pain, fingers pulling the hot flesh he gripped there with a sudden feverish insistence.

It was only three quick strokes before he felt the hot liquid regurgitation of cum as it rapidly spilled hot across his knuckles, quickly spreading sticky slickness under his palm and smearing in an opalescent line across his abdomen. Above them, he faintly registered the sound of something wooden snapping. The sound came in tandem with Jimmy making an unintelligible chain of curses just as a strong corresponding interior tremor pulsed around Gary's dick, and it pulled the teenager down instantaneously. _Down, down, down._ He groaned so hard he heard his own voice crack, and his vision snowed out as the orgasm that ripped through his body continuously threatened more damage than pleasure. He fully emptied himself out in a pantomime of thrusting hips, everything inside him pouring out until he was utterly spent and nothing was left after but sweat and a series of stains on the floor.

The world blinked out. Black and breathless.

And then, sluggishly, it returned again.

Through the haze, Gary sucked in a long inhalation of fresh air, and slowly returned to conscious thought. He blinked to return his vision back from whatever perilously distant pit of hell this adolescent fit had decidedly brought him to... and finally, when touch returned, over-sensitive and sweat-slick, he slowly uncurled his sticky fingers from around Jimmy's cum-coated dick. It was softening agonizingly in his hand, and when he released it, Jimmy let out a grunt of discomfort that unsettled the fine hairs on top of Gary's head. Smith untangled their limbs only far enough to pull out and separate sweaty skin from sweaty skin, before flopping over hard onto his back next to James. Their arms stayed tangled, yet neither was motivated enough by this point to pull apart.

Gary sucked in deep lungfuls of dusty air, his eyes staring, lidded but unblinking, up into the darkened attic ceiling beams. His chest felt hollow, and after a minute of chilling in the dark, he fumbled to yank his boxers back up from where he had shoved them down far past his thighs.

"...That..." Smith's voice meandered in their reclaimed silence. " _That_... was..."

 _Dangerous._ The word supplied itself. Gary rolled his head to the side to look at Jimmy, and an oddly unknowable, contemplative expression covered his face like a blanket.

"... _Good_." He supplied instead.

 

 

**JIMMY**

 

Jimmy's spine pressed a cold line along the attic floor as he waited for normal feeling and control to return to his body. A draft from the leaky attic window blew over his skin, drying and cooling and shriveling pores, subtly shifting the hairs on his chest and groin. He slowly flexed and wiggled his fingers and toes, experimenting with motion. He felt kinda like how he did after a good workout. Loose, boneless. Tired. Powerful.

Something was dripping out of him, he was pretty sure. He could feel it working a slime trail down the crack of his ass, pooling with the oil and sweat on the floor. He needed a shower so bad it wasn't even funny-they both did. He was distantly aware of a few key things-he'd done nothing to prepare himself for this, sanitation-wise, and they'd used neither lube nor condoms. But it had been good, and right. Almost like an initiation. They'd have to have a horrible conversation later about them both really, for real not messing around on each other if this no condom thing was gonna continue, but somehow Jimmy was pretty confident that wouldn't be a problem. Gary was his, as sure as he knew he was Gary's. They had been for a while now.

Gary was looking at him and saying something. Jimmy rolled his boulder head to the side and watched his lips move, full and dark. _Good_ , he said, and Jimmy closed his eyes and felt the word seep warm and pleasurable over his bones. He grunted in reply, letting the tired, idiot smile on his face do the talking.

He could feel his body shutting down for the night. He knew he had a limited window in which to move himself onto a comfortable surface before he was out until dawn. Slowly, almost regretfully, he untangled himself from Gary's already cold limbs and pushed himself to his feet. A hiss of pain escaped from between his teeth as he stood, the raw flesh in him rubbing against itself. Part of him wanted to lay into Gary about it- _next time we're using, like, a gallon of lube_ -but his pride won out and he sucked it up, walked over to the bay window without limping.

He stood for a minute and looked out over the yard, which by now was blanketed with white. In the distance he could see the last remaining lights of Bullworth twinkling against the cold air. Pretty soon, kids would be clamoring out of bed and shaking their parents awake so they could all go to the Christmas tree together and unwrap their toys. The spoiled little shits. The only thing under the Smith-Hopkins Christmas tree was Mr. Galloway, his body wrapped around tinsel wrapped around several bottles of empty scotch. _Still_ , Jimmy realized, scratching aimlessly at his hip. Feeling Gary's cum, and what was almost certainly a little blood, drip down the back of his legs. It was the first Christmas he could honestly say he didn't envy those families.

He tipped the dusty mattress onto the floor where it fell with a resounding _whumpf,_ sending dust rippling through the air.

"Oops," Jimmy added thoughtlessly. Gary had crossed his hands behind his head, was looking at him upside down from the floor with one eyebrow raised.

"You _trying_ to get us caught?" the reclining boy offered, in a tone that would have been a snarl if it wasn't so lazy.

"Hey, if they didn't hear us already I think we're okay," Jimmy sighed as he lowered himself onto the mattress. He was definitely going to get this thing _good_ and stained, he thought with a grimy smugness, wiggling his butt into the fabric. _Rip_ my _ass open, that's what you_ get.

"Yeah, you _did_ get a little loud there, Jimmy boy." The self-satisfaction in Gary's voice was intolerable.

"Uhh, _I_ got a little loud? Nice try. I seem to remember it being pretty freakin' mutual."

Lazy sniping with Gary had Jimmy feeling comfortable. He grabbed the edge of a nearby dusty comforter with his toes and flung it toward himself, showering himself with more attic dirt.

"Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night," he muttered, snuggling the blanket around himself. He heard Gary snort derisively in the darkness. He hoped Gary would come sleep with him eventually, but knew it wasn't something he had any control over. Jimmy would be there for him either way, solid and snoring, warming a place for him.

 

**GARY**

 

When Gary yanked back the body-warm blanket from Jimmy's naked body a half hour later, the redhead woke with a gasp. In the interim where James had keeled over thoughtless to the mess they had generated, Gary had tidied up the floor, hidden the broken chair Jimmy had snapped, and crept downstairs to clean himself up. For a long moment he had even considered simply returning to his room. It was the safer option, and by far the most cleanly. But something secret and small had whispered a protest in a voice that sounded just like his mother, and so, defeated in the end, Gary had taken a warm washcloth back upstairs. Dressed in clean boxers and a soft white undershirt, he ignored Jimmy's groans of protest as he sad down heavily beside him on the dusty mattress.

"Roll over." He commanded bluntly, and below him Jimmy's sleepy groan took on a defensive quality.

 _"Not again._ " He mumbled, slumber still half grasping him. Gary rolled his eyes.

"I'm not gonna _pork_ you again, moron, you're just _filthy_. It's _disgusting_."

Making a huff of acquiescence like an old dog, Jimmy flopped heavily over onto his stomach. The washcloth came down, and Gary set to the meticulous task of wiping up a disconcerting smear of cum and blood off of the back of the nodding teenager's thighs.

"...I can't _believe_ you let me do... _that_." Gary muttered, frowning at where the white washcloth was turning faintly pink.

"hnnn... _Your_ turn next time." The sloppy, exhausted mumble barely made it past Jimmy's lips before he was snoring faintly again into the pillowless mattress. For a minute, it was the only sound in the room.

"Like hell it is." Gary retorted, despite knowing Jimmy had already mentally checked out. He sighed, then folded the dirty washcloth, setting it neatly parallel with the edge of the mattress. He examined it in the shadows, before swiveling his head to look at Jimmy again.

Gary sat straight backed on the mattress, legs folded indian-style, as he looked Jimmy over. He _considered_ sleeping... He even felt tired. But at long last, the variety of frustratingly normal behaviors Gary was usually plagued by were finally returning to overtake him. He couldn't sleep. Not right now. He brain wouldn't allow it.

But that didn't necessarily mean he had to _leave_. Did it?

Blinking away the strange sensation of deciding to stay, Gary absently pulled the dusty blanket with a cringing hand back up Jimmy's body, dropping it in a soft flop around his shoulders. A few paltry pats went down to tuck in the corners in a parody of the way he had seen mothers with their babies in the town. And then his hands were limp in his lap again. He let his mind wander, though his eyes continued to graze Jimmy's shoulders, soaking in every awkward lump of flesh, every freckle, every spit stain.

It was unbelievable how far they had come. How far Gary personally had gone. Never had he thought once that he could end up like this. Not filthy and fluid-stained and hiding like a coward in an attic full of a dead woman's things, but something genuinely more surprising. He had never expected, not _ever_ , even in a million years, to ever have a friend. It was a profound thought, even for a brainy, neurotic teenager, and he chewed on it with a mild sense of distant puzzlement as he sat there. Jimmy _was_ his friend. But now, he was something more than that. It was nearly impossible to define what exactly Jimmy Hopkins now was, other than lunkhead, than moron, than dumbass, or any of the other words Gary peppered over him to show him, in a backwards way, a kind of affection. Now, even as he splayed out squishfaced and snoring in the dust, he loomed larger than ever. He was bigger than everything now. Bigger than Pete. Bigger than Mr. Smith. And almost bigger than Gary's dead mother, who still whispered advice to him sometimes when things were dark and he was too alone. So. What was Jimmy? Surely some kind of family, though any more meaningful description was beyond even the smartest of the Smiths.

Gary sat watching over Jimmy for several more hours. He sat and guarded him until the first blush of dawn crept across the distant horizon, and then he went on tiptoe down the stairs five safe minutes before he heard his father rouse early from his bed.

 

 

Christmas Day dawned blue and clear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello gentle readers! Still with us? Wow, how even are you still reading this. Thanks again for following along with this bible-length emotional and literal smutfest so far though! Change is finally on the horizon! Are the boys finally together at last? Will they finally create a singularly unbeatable unit of chaos and anarchy? Or does trouble lurk just around the corner, listening intently? With the arrival of the much expected prom, get ready for the onset of something generally resembling a finale. And then a FINAL finale. After the initial finale. And then maybe another, smaller one after that? fffff.....iinnnalleee....ssssss.....multiple........ finales. stay tuned!


	11. Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gary and Zoe have a fateful argument. Jimmy and Gary navigate the newfound intimacy of their relationship. Petey stands up for himself.

 

**GARY**

 

The Spring months were transitory. School resumed after break with little fanfare other than a certain upswing in gossip about the approaching prom. The Bullhorns brought their season to an end after an unspeakable streak of undefeated victories. Flowers began to speckle the landscape, and soon, hand-in-hand with the warming weather, the sound of juiced up jocks torturing any kid who dared come close was paired with the scent of Edna’s famous everything-must-go winter blowout meatloaf. Cheerleaders cried in freshly sleeveless uniforms over a constantly rotating series of cheating boyfriends, Algernon and Bucky began building the new year's foam larping weapons in the open air of the library terrace, and an unknown, unsung hero took it upon himself to make sure that at the end of every school day, the toilets exploded.

 

Since making such a public spectacle of his farcical rival with Jimmy, Gary's father had been much more willing to participate in their quote unquote  _ ‘rehabilitation’ _ . After school had resumed, Mr.Smith had spoken with Crabblesnitch to permanently lift the travel ban on the boys, then immediately signed both sons up for additional extracurricular activities. Like putting retired racing dogs back on the track, the activities were meant to hone old skills (and sharpen college applications.) Not particularly intent on pissing the man off who could probably get away with setting his own sons on fire, Gary played along. Without having to discuss it, Jimmy did too, though with a somewhat more obvious chip on his shoulder about it. Ever the stubborn pighead, he had grumbled and rolled his shoulders in palpable dislike.

 

Jimmy had been assigned after school lessons in welding, and was expected to not only compete in the competitive Bullworth bicycling circuit, but also simply to always win it. Mr. Smith had begun actively excluding him from the family accounts if he failed to return with a trophy at least once a month. Worse, he would convince Jimmy's mother to guilt him about it, and Gary had watched, mostly in anger, but also secretly with a slight amusement, as Jimmy had grumped and huffed until he finally fell into a regular schedule.

 

Gary's after school lessons were with a sharp elderly woman who spoke a dialect of German so severe that Gary half suspected butterflies fell dead out of the air as she walked past. His own German was growing stronger, and progressively more acerbic, much to his father's pleasure. His sport of choice had been to return to boxing, and so every evening after his German tutoring he walked to the Glass Jaw, returning only late in the evenings dripping in sweat with his gloves slung around his neck. This was relatively acceptable for the most part, but Derby spent the majority of his time there admiring Bif marauding around the ring like a caged animal, and it was annoying having to constantly tolerate his smug machinations about how best to pull Jimmy off his throne. Gary did his part in shit talking, but was careful to only ever conclude with a promise that Jimmy would get what was coming to him in good time.

 

The truth of it was something much different. For the first time in his life, Gary felt settled. Primarily, this was because of Jimmy. It was completely bizarre that the human who had caused him more grief than any other person on the planet was now the source of his greatest happiness. And yet, in a backwards kind of way, it was completely true. They made a show of being nasty to one another in public as they always had, but there was an element of fun to it now that was secretly thrilling. When they met in private in the rare pockets of stolen time they could find together, it was a particular point of amusement to come up with the next social faux pas that they could perform to reiterate the story of their rivalry. Gary was pleased to discover during this time that Jimmy, if given a chance, was actually a fair bit brighter than he had ever let on. His ideas were solid, and when he bent himself to a task, there were very few things he couldn't accomplish if he tried. He was pigheaded, and it was an advantage for him in the very specific way he did things.

 

Other times, when they met, there was only one thing on the agenda. Subsequent attempts at intimacy had greatly improved their game, and now that the risk of getting caught was exponentially higher, the resulting fucks were always explosive. Time and effort were finally beginning to yield fruitful results, and it palpably showed in Gary's face as he moved through the tiny universe of their school campus. His eyes were clearer than they had ever been, and Petey, after weeks of weirdness, had finally begun to come around to the idea that his friends were together again. He was their only confidant, their secret keeper, and somehow it made Gary respect him a little for it. Not _ a lot _ , but, enough to take the sting out of the punches he swung at Petey's shoulder from time to time.

 

The only source of soreness left over between Gary and Jimmy now was a certain buxom redhead. Gary didn't ask about Zoe primarily because he almost never saw her on campus, but secondarily because he was a little afraid of popping the bubble. For once in his fucking life, things were good. Not just okay, or tolerably unpleasant, but actually, honestly,  _ good _ . Jimmy didn't volunteer any information about Zoe and so it went unspoken between them, but occasionally Gary would see Jimmy, often at a great distance, with his head bent together with a townie and he would wonder at what must have happened. Gary despised loose ends, but this was one he knew wasn't up to him to tie up. Not unless Zoe came to him first. And that, of course, would only end in disaster.

 

"Gary! Hey!"

 

Evening air cooled Gary's sweaty forehead as he turned on the walkway up through the front school gates. His boxing gloves bounced against his chest as he twisted to grin wryly at Petey, who bounced up to him from across the street, his backpack dragging low with textbooks.

 

"Did you finish that paper for me  _ or what _ , pipsqueak?" Smith questioned affably. Petey grinned.

 

"Didn't you see it on your desk earlier? I dropped it off after afternoon classes!"

 

Gary hooked a finger under his glove strings to make them bounce again. " _ Boxing _ , idiot, I was at the  _ gym _ ."

 

They walked shoulder to shoulder up the brick path, only stopping at the turn to the boy's dormitory. Petey pivoted with a raised eyebrow. "I don't get it. It's not like you're dumb or anything, Gary. Why bother paying me to write a paper you could write yourself in twenty minutes?"

 

The reply came in the form of a grin. It grew wider, cheshire-like in it's borderline creepiness, and Petey pondered it a minute before laughing out loud. "OH,  _ I get _ it. You're seeing Jimmy tonight. Duh. Who wants to do homework when you can like, mack or whatever."

 

"What's wrong, little Petey?  _ Still _ need somebody to  _ pop _ your  _ cherry _ ? Don't be jealous. Want  _ me _ to do it for you?"

 

"Heh, shut up." Petey giggled, though his eyes temporarily skated the ground. His shoes appeared much more fascinating to him for a few long seconds, before looking up again with a smile. "Careful tonight, ok? There's like  _ four _ new prefects ever since that scandal with Chad's dog and the butter had those other guys fired." an afterthought pinged and Petey quirked his head to one side. "You know, I think I heard they're all at the police academy now?"

 

Gary waved the caution off with chapped knuckles. "Yeah, ok head boy.  _ Safety first, _ got it,  _ thanks _ . Condoms are  _ uncomfortable _ , ok?"

 

"I'm serious!" Kowalski insisted, rising up on the balls of his toes. Gary grinned at how small he was. How small he would probably  _ always _ be. "This is  _ dangerous _ for you guys!"

 

"Thanks  _ mom _ . Jesus." Gary mocked further, before casting his gaze out across the pink sky and towards the distant roof of Harrington house. "Don't worry,  _ we'll be safe." _

 

For the first time in months, Derby would be yachting for the entire weekend. And as went Derby Harrington, so went the rich boy entourage. Hardly anybody would be in Harrington House for the night, making it a perfect destination spot. It was safe. It was more than safe. Safer than the gym, anyway.  Safer than a lot of places.

 

"Anyway," Gary finished up the sentiment in complete confidence.  "It's the moron's turn to come to me."

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**ZOE**   
  


Zoe picked her way down the beach at dusk, following the sounds of the crowd. The band was supposed to have a gig tonight, but it got cancelled at the last minute—the club owner must have gotten wind of the property damage from last week’s show. She had left while Klaus was throwing a seismic tantrum in the bar, whipping up the rest of the band into following suit. So much for the club owner’s worries about property damage. On another night, an earlier night, she too would have been caught up in the violent emotions that Klaus broadcasted from every pore in his body, would have been breaking tables with the rest of them and brandishing her splintered and bloody hands for his approval.    
  
But tonight she didn’t have it in her. She’d found him in bed with another groupie this morning, one she recognized from school, who looked frighteningly young next to Klaus who had just celebrated his thirtieth the night before. They weren’t exclusive, of course, but it had still set her stomach turning in a way she couldn’t shake. So she’d set out from the club and gone wandering through the Vale, a part of town she rarely visited anymore, in search of a remedy to the loathsome emptiness of the night ahead.   
  
She reached the head of the crowd just as the first of the cyclists crested the stairs. Two shapes were neck in neck as they soared off the top of the stairs and landed in the sand with a spray.  Flashlights whirled over the bodies of the racers as the only sources of light, but Zoe didn’t need them to know one of the shadows by heart, a heart that leapt treacherously at the sight of him.   
  
It was the first time she’d seen Jimmy in months—certainly the first time she’d seen him since she’d overheard a townie saying he’d been put in the hospital by Gary Smith. After inserting herself into the stranger’s conversation and throttling him until he gave her the rest of the details, of which there were few, Zoe had fallen into a black mood that lasted for days. She felt immeasurably guilty for not visiting him in the hospital, for not even knowing he’d been seriously hurt until months after the fact. Of course, then she’d been furious with herself for feeling guilty, in a cycle of negativity whose only outlet was the furious sets the band played nightly to ever growing crowds. She’d gotten more compliments for her drumming that week than any other, but it hadn’t cheered her up. Only physical exhaustion was the remedy.   
  
That and reconciliation, a treacherous voice told her, but Zoe was allergic to apologies as she was to any sincere statement of emotion. So she hadn’t sought him out, but he loomed large in her thoughts, particularly as the shine began to wear off of her current boyfriend. She’d been seeing Klaus Acid, lead singer of the Acid Traps, since the beginning of last year, the night before Jimmy’s mom’s wedding. She remembered the first time she saw him, at a show in some warehouse on the edge of town. The animal sounds that came out of him had vibrated through her body, leaving her wandering the streets all night with a racing heart until she eventually found Jimmy at the Smith mansion when dawn broke. Mostly things with Klaus had been really fantastic. Until around last fall, with the attack.    
  
Zoe hadn’t seen what happened, only the aftermath. The boys had busted down her door at 1AM practically carrying him. His face was bloody and broken to be barely recognizable, and he was out of his mind with the pain. Zoe had no idea who did it, because Klaus refused to talk about it beyond stating that they guy “got his.” Zoe doubted it, though, because Klaus had just gotten more and more paranoid since the incident. Drawing more and more in on himself, seeing monsters in every shadow, and seeking comfort in more and more shitfaced teenage girls… Zoe wished more than anything that she knew who did it to him, so that she could enact her revenge. But robbed of that, she just grew apart from Klaus, and found herself thinking more and more about Jimmy.   
  
As Jimmy and the rest of the racers pedaled furiously down the beach in their final lap, Zoe fought with herself on whether to stay. She was fairly certain he hadn’t seen her, his fierce attention focused on a single point of victory, victory, and she would have been able to escape unawares. But she found herself lingering on the edge of the crowd, telling herself it was just to see if he won.   
  
A cool wind blew in off the bay and Zoe covered her arms to keep off the chill. She had been so preoccupied during her walk, she hadn’t realized she’d left the club without a jacket. In her ripped tank top and jeans, she was hardly dressed for the early spring air. Out on the water, she saw the lights of an enormous yacht parked near the dock. Saxophone jazz floated toward her, and she could see a sea of Aquaberry sweaters coming on and off the boat, moonlight glinting off their white teeth and full glasses of champagne. She wanted nothing more than to Molotov the lot of them, and was fantasizing setting Klaus on them when she heard the crowd kick back up as the front-runner skidded into first.   
  
Zoe held back as the crowd surged around her to meet Jimmy, because of course it was him. Flashlights strobed over him as someone pushed a gold trophy into his hands. For one heart-stopping moment, Jimmy looked directly at Zoe, and she felt time stop. He was grinning, pouring sweat and bleeding kingship, looking at her like it was her he had won, not the trophy. And then his black eyes swept over the rest of the crowd, and she realized he was completely blinded by the flashlights. He’d never seen her at all. He held the trophy over his head and crowed, and the crowd crowed with him, before two greasers lifted him up on their shoulders and began parading him down the beach. Zoe felt her face frozen in an expectant smile, mushed it around with her hands before trudging up the stairs to the street, alone.    
  
Seeing Jimmy on top, in his rightful place as king of the kids, gave her a mix of emotions too conflicting to process. Happy to see him healthy and well after rumors of his gruesome fall, but also so jealous and alienated that he was doing so well without her. He was a vision of the past, a past that they had shared, but now felt too far away from her to access.   
  
Zoe walked through the night as if she were sleepwalking, and when she looked up realized she was on school grounds, almost back to the girls' dorm. She'd been dwelling so hard on the past, her feet must have taken her the way she used to travel every day last year, when she was still going to school regularly. Since joining the band she'd barely been on campus at all, and she cursed her traitor body for giving into the nostalgia.

 

She was turning to leave when she spotted another shadow walking alone, passing the school front steps. Another figure walking alone in the dark--another figure she recognized. At the outline of the austere haircut and the boxing gloves bouncing across his chest, Zoe’s roil of conflicting emotions transformed into a much more comfortable and familiar form—buzzing rage.

  
Gary.   
  
Everything was Gary’s fault. He’d put Jimmy in the hospital, hurt him worse than anyone had ever managed before. If you got down to it, Gary was the reason Zoe and Jimmy had grown apart in the first place. Jimmy had been fine before Gary was sprung from Happy Volts. Now that she thought about it, even Klaus’s attack had been around the same time Gary had put Jimmy in the hospital—in her rage-addled mind, Zoe could even see Gary leaping from the shadows like a wild animal and taking Klaus unawares. Every problem could be traced back to the sneering, vile teenager, and he just kept getting away with it. Well, not anymore.   
  
“HEY,” she snarled, and the figure ahead of her stopped.   
  
She clenched and unclenched her calloused hands. All the energy from seeing Jimmy, plus everything else she would have been able to let out at the gig, was still pulsing through her body, calling for violence.    
  
“I heard about what you did to Jimmy. And you might think you got away with it because your daddy owns half the town, but I won’t let you. You hear me,  _ Smith _ ?” 

  
  
  


 

**GARY**   
  


For what had to be a good thirty seconds, Gary Smith stood completely frozen to the spot he had stopped in after the initial hail. If he hadn't already been so far away, lost in his own thoughts over the coming evening, he might have responded more quickly. He might have, somehow, seen some better way to quickly process this new situation. But as things stood, his muscles pleasantly exhausted from a rigorous workout at the Glass Jaw, the voice had surprised him. It was a rare thing indeed to catch someone like Gary Smith completely unaware, and yet, absurdly, it had happened. Distant, pleasurable machinations about the evening he was planning came to a full stop at that sharp bark of anger,  and it destroyed what had been until recently a very pleasant mind space. Gary stood totally still, bent at a backwards angle as he turned to look to the source of the noise. He briefly became a wild animal caught in the headlights of an approaching truck. His lips parted slightly as he stared at the furious girl, and he let his brain take in the image of her storming aggressively towards him while he waited for whatever conclusion his mind might make.

 

Zoe Taylor.   _ Was tonight the night they would finally do this? _

 

And then all at once, Gary was Gary again. He turned his stiff shoulders toward her as she angrily stopped up short in front of him, just a little too close for comfort. She was furious. That, and  _ tall _ . Jesus  _ christ _ , she was  _ so tall. _ Gary had to angle his gaze up slightly to meet her blustery eyes. Furious about, wait, about...  _ what _ was she so mad about again? Smith's eyes darted rapidly up and down her figure as his mind jump started itself. His first glaring thought was perhaps the most obvious one; they had never spoken to one another before. Not  _ once, _ in their entire lives.

 

But clearly, Gary mused, from the fashion of her entrance, the courtesy of an introduction was obviously not needed.  _ They already recognized one another.  _

 

"Sorry, do I _ know you _ or something?" Gary spat, his eyes narrowing in enjoyment when Zoe's nostrils flared at the first insult. Oh, she knew him, alright. She knew _ exactly who he was _ , just like he knew her. If it wasn't so annoying, Gary would have felt a subtle admiration for her. But of course, she  _ was _ annoying, so,  _ he didn't _ .

 

"Cut the shit, Smith, alright?" Zoe spat brutally, her huge hands clenching and unclenching in tremors of anger. God, she was some kind of horrible amazon. "Don't make me repeat myself!"

 

"Oh, Jimmy,  _ right _ . Right! Your  _ boyfriend _ . How's that going, by the way?" Gary angled himself a little straighter, standing up taller as an evening breeze cut across his sweaty forehead. His voice was a mockery of manners, polite and teasing at once.  "You, uh,  _ talk _ a lot to good old Jimmy-boy anymore? Because, I mean, as far as I can tell, he's fine. That hole in the belly's nothing but an ugly scar and a bad memory. He's _ been  _ fine. He's been fine for  _ months _ . Of course _ I  _ know he's fine, because he's  _ my _ brother. Who are  _ you _ again?"

 

The words spilled out acridly, and Gary's gaze tracked carefully across Zoe's face. He took in her anger, the way her red hair fell across her forehead in disheveled tresses, the sweat that collected in her cleavage, the way her sneakers scuffed against the walkway. He continued to hold his body tense and still, unsure if the direction of this conversation might violently shift. Gary wasn't above hitting a girl... or, hitting _ the right girl _ , anyway. The kind of girl who might be able to really clobber him if he let it happen. The kind of girl who might break his nose with that enormous steel-toe, that  _ hideous clodhopper _ that might as well belong to some pissed off giantess and not just a slutty high schooler. She  _ seriously _ needed to get out of his face.

But then... there was Jimmy.  Gary physically attempted to unclench his own fists, thinking of the way Jimmy would look at him if he hit Zoe Taylor at all, much less on campus. It wouldn't....  _ go over well _ . Alright, maybe that was a little bit of an understatement. (OK, it was  _ definitely _ an understatement.) So he wouldn't hit her. But then, of course, there was a frustratingly deeper question.

 

How much did Zoe...  _ actually know? _

 

What _was_ this? Gary took a placating step backwards, raising his hands in a sudden gesture of peace. A smile even crept along his lips, though it never quite reached his eyes. Was she calling him out now because she had _finally learned_ about her old flame's new flame? Was she pushing him now out of jealousy? Or was she simply just furious, and in need of a punching bag? Gary wasn't exactly sure. But he sure _did_ know a thing or two about punching bags, and that he _definitely_ _didn't want to be one_.

 

"Look, _ calm down _ , ok? I'm  _ sorry _ ! Sometimes I just get a little...  _ worked up _ !" Smith shot out a placating hand to wave the hideous monster girl away, Zoe's face flickering briefly with confusion. "There's  _ no reason _ we can't have a  _ reasonable conversation _ , right?"

 

And yet, part of him couldn't recoil from his desire to hurt this blustery teenage girl, so like so many other girls Gary had torn down just for the fun of it. And, of course, this time it was so much more personal.  _ Who was she to Jimmy?  _ Why did he seem to  _ care _ so  _ deeply _ about the things she said? The things she did? Who was she to  _ anyone _ ? Wouldn't it be better for  _ everyone _ if she would just go shoot up with a dirty needle and quietly die in a junkie hovel somewhere? Like Gary had always heard she favored? Like Gary had always privately wished would happen?  So that they would never have to have  _ this _ conversation?

 

"I mean, if you're just  _ jealous _ that you're not getting  _ any attention from Jimmy _ anymore, and that _ I am _ , then that would be  _ completely _ understandable."    
  


  
  


 

**ZOE**

  
  


Well,  _ that _ was odd. Gary was not reacting the way she would have anticipated. She frowned down at him, her brow drawn in frustrated confusion. She was definitely expecting more bragging about hurting Jimmy. More lording over the fact that their stupid rivalry continued despite the fact that Jimmy both  _ could _ and  _ should have _ beaten Gary to death a long time ago. More aloof haughtiness maybe, more barbed disdain while beating a hasty retreat, only to plan his pathetic revenge later. Instead, he was acting like a prissy new girlfriend having to deal with a jealous ex. While also... apologizing. _ What? _

 

Maybe it was the unexpectedness of the method of attack, but Zoe was pretty taken aback. She hadn't been expecting him to cut directly to such a vulnerable area, the same one she had been brooding over as she crossed the bridge to campus.  _ Who was she to Jimmy, anyway? What right did she have to come here, now, demanding revenge months after the fact? _ Gary was cleverer than she'd bargained for, if he'd been able to figure out her insecurities just by looking at her. Was he a psychic or something? Now she felt bad for all the times she'd rolled her eyes at Jimmy for letting him get under his skin This kid was a beast, and he must be destroyed. 

 

But could she take care of him on her own? Face to face with him for the first time in her life, she wasn't so sure. All the times Jimmy had ranted to her about what a monster Gary was... Zoe had thought he was just being dramatic. She'd formed a picture of him through rumor and occasional observation that was somehow incompatible with the boy before her. He was shorter, for one. Not Jimmy level short, of course, but still. He was stockier, more... physical, than she'd imagined. Up close, there was a kind of terrifying energy buzzing just beneath his skin. It almost reminded her of Jimmy, actually... But it was wrong somehow, like Gary was tuned to the wrong frequency. She was suddenly unsure whether or not she could actually  _ win _ against Gary in a one-on-one fight. She took a step back.

 

"Listen,  _ Smith _ . You don't know anything about me and Jimmy. You're not his brother—you and your family are nothing but a dead weight tied around his neck that he's gonna cut off as soon as he's out of this place. I don't know how you got close enough to hurt him last time, but you better believe it won't happen again. I will  _ end _ you, you understand me?"

 

"Oh, is that so?" Gary scoffed. "You and whose army? A girl and her cabal of junky townies, ooh. I'm  _ trembling _ thinking of all the tetanus I'm going to get."

 

"Not just townies—I got guys. Tough guys, with no fear and no ties to anybody in this two-bit town. They catch you in an alley late at night, you better hope you have health insurance. And as for me and Jimmy..."

 

Zoe didn't know why she felt like she needed to prove her relationship to horrible little shit, especially when it was barely a relationship at all anymore. But her blood was up and her pride was on the line. Her eyes skated over the school building behind Gary's head, taking in a large hand-drawn banner that said "Vote Pinky for Prom Queen!" in glittery paint, and she got an idea.

 

"Jimmy's going to prom with me. That enough  _ attention _ for you?"   
  


  
  
  
  
  
  


**GARY**

 

They catch you in an alley late at night, you better hope you have health insurance.

 

_ Catch you in an alley.  _

 

The words circled back, painting a perfect picture. Gary's face remained a rigid neutral as he imagined in a pristine lightning flash the goons Zoe had just described. Without ever having actually seen them, they were surprisingly easy to concoct in his own mind. Four, maybe five of them. Taller than most of the student body, but no taller than the prefects. Older. Meaner. Less educated. Meth crust circling sneering lips, haircuts that took the hair down to the scalp. Or mullets the result of a poorly administered hack job with a dull trailer park pocket knife. Cigarette burn holes in their jeans, and the smell of wet dog and mildew clinging to their skin.

 

_ I got guys. _

 

_ In an alley. _

Shadows roaming in the dark. Closing in on someone smaller. Younger. Outnumbered. His back scraping against the brick. His ruddy, freckled cheek already streaked with blood, his beer and cellphone all but forgotten as the shadows circle in closer, blocking his escape on all sides.   

 

_ TOUGH guys. _

 

Before fully comprehending his own actions, Gary felt his body jerk forward.

 

_ "What _ guys?" He barked, his own voice surprising himself with it's unexpected savagery. A second later, Gary realized his hand had taken a healthy fistful of Zoe's shirt, but he was too furious to force his fingers to unclench. "If it was YOU who sent them, I  _ swear _ I'll-"

 

"Get OFF ME, you psychopath!" The taller girl had surprisingly little trouble knocking Gary's fist away. She followed up the shove almost immediately with a white-hot slap across Smith's face, hard enough to set his ears ringing. He fell back a step, temporarily too shocked to say anything.

 

"You know I'd always  _ heard _ you were totally crazy, but I didn't  _ think _ it was to the point where you would be, like _ , openly accosting girls on campus. Jesus.  _ No wonder nobody likes you! And don't you DARE touch me again, freak, you hear me? You'll wind up in a dumpster, alright? I don't care  _ who _ your daddy is!"

 

Gary shook his head to clear the ringing. In a way, the slap had almost been...  _ almost _ ... helpful. ( _ Barely _ .) The temporary influx of rage had taken Gary by surprise, and processing his own thoughts now helped to clear the situation up a little. Why would ZOE send goons after Jimmy? Wasn't she here trying to, what?  _ Defend _ his honor, or something? But Gary's instincts had always served him before today, and something about this still seemed fishy.

 

Feeling something close to impressed by how hamfisted this junior amazon actually was, Gary raised his eyes to meet Zoe's again, this time more deliberately. If she and Jimmy ever bred, their resulting idiot offspring would be powerful enough to punch holes clean through concrete walls. That baby would be an abomination. He glared at her, growing progressively more paranoid. He opened his mouth to spit as cruel an insult as he could devise on the spot, when his eyes instead flicked to the horizon and he suddenly changed tactics at the last possible second.

 

"Prom date, huh?" Gary breathed, wiping the corner of his grimace with the back of his hand. "Well,  _ here comes _ your Romeo  _ now _ , just in time to _ save the day. _ Lucky  _ you _ ."

 

With what had to be the all time loudest screech Gary had ever heard a tire make, Jimmy Hopkins dramatically swept up to a hard stop on his bicycle directly between them. He was sweaty, and even in the poor light of the evening, droplets of condensation caught a glittering rim as James perspired the day's activities into the collar of his racing shirt. He was staring between them now with an abject look of horror on his face. He appeared to be oscillating between nausea and flabbergastion, and Gary couldn't help the amused hiccup that rose at Jimmy's obvious distress. The entire debacle of processing the fact that Gary and Zoe were having a conversation seemed to have stumped him, because for a short silence he stood on jerkily stiff knees with nothing to say, his sweaty palms glued to his bars in a vice grip.  

 

" _ No _ ." Jimmy finally settled on the word that seemed to best fit his reaction. Hearing himself say it seemed to solidify his stance, and he glared pointedly at Gary. "Nuh uh.  _ Whatever _ this is, it ends  _ now _ ."

 

Finding her voice again, Zoe cut in before Gary could respond. "It's fine, Jimmy, your  _ asshole stepbrother _ just tried to  _ hit _ me, but everything's fine."

 

Hopkins sputtered. "Wait, woah,  _ what _ ?"

 

Gary smiled at Zoe over Jimmy's shoulder without the smallest trace of kindness. She glared back at him, unrelenting. 

 

"You know, snitches get stitches." He rebutted conversationally. 

 

"So do bitches. Try that again and I will  _ end you _ ."

 

"Gary, man, you did  _ what _ ?"

 

The distressed note to Jimmy's voice was strong, but it was his hand on Gary's arm that finally broke Smith out of his locking glare. He let his eyes instead snap to Jimmy, and that seemed to be exactly the reinforcement most needed. His face marginally relaxed, and he smiled again, this time with a hint of honey.

 

" _ Nothing _ !" Gary raised both his hands up in surrender, his boxing gloves bouncing sadly against his chest with the gesture. His knuckles were still raw from the evening's sparring, and they throbbed as he stretched each of the joints out as straight as they would go.

 

"I didn't  _ do anything _ . Your little  _ girlfriend _ over here was just  _ explaining _ to me that she would send some  _ tough guys _ to  _ beat me up _ in an  _ alley _ if I didn't leave her poor little _ dum dum schnookums _ alone. Get me, here, Jimmy-boy?  _ In an alley _ ?"

 

Willing Jimmy to catch his hint, he flung it as bluntly as he could. He sighed when Jimmy only stared back at him in puzzlement.

 

"And  _ actually _ ,  _ she _ hit  _ me _ .  If you want to get technical." 

  
  
  
  


 

**ZOE**

 

"He deserved it."

 

"Yeah, no, that makes sense."

 

The way Jimmy's hand lingered on Gary's arm perturbed her. Hadn't she just said Gary had tried to hit her? Why did it then feel like Jimmy was somehow comforting Gary? They stood close together in a way that seemed disturbingly natural. And wasn't Gary's voice... different, somehow, now? 

 

Whatever. Gary in person was even less pleasant than the monster she'd heard about. He was unpredictable in a way that set her nerves on end. He made Klaus's mood swings look like child's play. She needed to be away from him as of at least ten minutes ago. 

 

"Come on, Jimmy, why don't you walk me back to town," Zoe said as she turned and walked away. She got about ten feet before she realized he wasn't following, and she turned to watch him as she waited. 

 

His head was bowed next to Gary's and he seemed to be saying something, something that Gary did not appear to be enjoying. Good. She thought she heard wait, or later, and an unhappy smile sat on her face as she told herself he meant he'd have to wait for his ass-kicking. There was something off about seeing the two of them next to each other. 

 

But then Jimmy pulled away and jogged toward her, his bike left abandoned in the grass. 

  
  
  


They walked in awkward silence. She tried not to regret ordering him to come with her. She suddenly felt like she had intruded into his life--his messy ex--but he was being too polite to say anything. She was about to tell him to buzz off when he spoke up. 

 

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asked, almost sheepishly. "He didn't hit you? Or say anything weird?"

 

She scoffed as they passed a scowling prefect, his flashlight sweeping over them briefly and accusatory.

 

"He said plenty of weird shit, but yeah, I'm fine."

 

Jimmy let out a breath that he seemed to have been holding in since he'd pedaled up and seen the both of them locked in battle. A silence fell between them, punctuated only by the scrape of their tennis shoes on the concrete.

 

"So, long ti—"

 

"Want to go to prom with me?" Zoe blurted.

 

Jimmy stopped mid-sentence, his mouth open dumbly. She wanted to tell him to close it or he'd catch flies. They walked like that for a minute, Jimmy thinking so hard as to be practically audible.

 

"Wait... you're going to prom?" Jimmy said, his voice thick with incredulity. "Didn't you, like, drop out again?" 

 

She just shrugged. She hadn't been going to classes recently, but it wasn't a dropping out situation, at least officially.

 

"Are they gonna let you in the door?"

 

"They can try to stop me." She grinned, and he grinned too, and something inside her shifted and fell into place.

 

"Sounds pretty fun. Yeah, of course. But listen, Zoe..."

 

"Uh-oh."

 

"I'm kind of... I'm seeing someone."

 

"Doy. You're Jimmy Hopkins, you're always seeing like twenty someones."

 

"No, I mean..." He looked suddenly looked really uncomfortable. He brought one meaty hand up to rub the fine hairs on top of his head. She could see the goosebumps on his biceps. "Like, seeing someone. Exclusively."

 

Zoe just stared at him. Distant alarm bells went off in her head.

 

"So... this is a no, then?"

 

"No, I mean, yeah--or no, I guess. I can go with you. I... don't think prom is really their scene. Going with them isn't really, uh, an option. So I'd love to go with you, honestly, as long as you are cool with it just being as friends."

 

Her blood was running cold, and for some reason she kept hearing Gary's snotty voice echoing in her ears. 

 

_ "I mean, if you're just jealous that you're not getting any attention from Jimmy anymore, and that I am, then that would be completely understandable." _

 

"I'm not jealous, Jimmy."

 

"Uh... duh? I didn't say you were?"

 

"And I have a boyfriend now, anyway."

 

"...I'm happy for you, Zoe," and the sincerity in his voice made her blood curdle.

 

"So thanks for the friendly warning but I really didn't need it, and I don't need you going as my pity date either."

 

She turned on her heel and stomped off in the direction of the warehouse. He didn't follow, and she didn't allow herself to be disappointed. 

 

"So are we going or what?" he called after her after a few moments. She flipped him the bird in reply. 

 

"I'm taking that as a ye~es!"

 

She turned then. He was leaning half against the school gate. He brought his hands down from around his mouth and she could see he was grinning, completely eat up with himself. Same old Jimmy.

 

She felt a traitorous smile creeping onto her face, but saved it by making a loooong fart noise and flipping him two birds, repeatedly. He blew her a kiss, which she dodged exaggeratedly. Then she turned to make the long, cool walk back to the warehouse, feeling a little warmer.

  
  
  


 

**JIMMY**   
  


Jimmy's smile faded slowly as Zoe got farther away. As soon as she was a safe distance down the bridge, he turned and jogged back through the gate, his breath coming out in plumes of white. 

 

He had to find Gary. He was due one piping hot explanation.

 

He made it back to where he'd found them, the spot marked by his poor abandoned bicycle, but of course Gary was gone.  _ Wait here _ , he'd said, and so naturally Gary had disappeared the moment Jimmy was out of sight.

 

He kicked his back tire in frustration, starting his wheel spinning  _ tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. _

 

A chill wind clawed at him, and he brought his hands up to rub at his frozen elbows. When had it gotten so  _ cold _ , anyway? He'd been so nice and warm earlier, his calves pumping the pedals of his bicycle down the beach. Adrenaline and victory in his veins. It must have been the drying sweat that made him so cold--that and the fact that seeing Gary and Zoe locked in combat earlier had been like plunging into a bath of ice water. 

 

Two goals, then. He had to find Gary, and he had to get warm. With any luck, both at the same time--in creative and fulfilling ways. 

 

_ Think, Hopkins, _ he told his frozen brain. Where would he have gone?

 

A single lit window at Harrington House caught his eye. It wasn't that late yet--most of the windows should have been lit at this time of night. Except... the yacht party, of course. They were all down at the docks getting wasted and feeling up their cousins. Everyone except the odd man out, the black sheep of Harrington House. 

 

It was creeping toward curfew, and even though the rules on his and Gary's interactions had been relaxed since Christmas, Jimmy was still very forbidden from the prep club house/dormitory (which meant naturally he'd been fantasizing about fucking Gary in it for months). Hoping Gary had similar designs, or at the very least had sought refuge there to try and evade him, Jimmy slunk shivering toward the most moneyed building on campus.

  
  
  


 

**GARY**

 

As warm spring air collided with the chill of the oncoming evening, a steady rain picked up in a patter against the panes of Gary's bedroom window. At first it came in a steady staccato, fat wet drops sliding languorously down the exterior glass. But in seemingly no time at all, the pace stepped up to a steady hiss, serpentine and omnipresent. As he dropped his boxing gloves with a soft whumph on his quilt, Gary heard in the distance the first approaching rumbles of a thunderstorm.

 

Harrington House had thick, private walls, and heavy wooden doors. The roof itself was constantly under scrutiny, ensuring no drop of rain or crack in the plaster might damage the possessions of any of the wealthy borders within. But even so, the building was still old, and nothing could keep the window from rattling in the frame when a peal of thunder and a gust of wind shook it from the outside. Gary briefly let his jaw clench at the passing sound, before turning away as lighting slipped across his bedroom floor in a silent flash.

 

The boxing gloves puckered the perfect military folds of Gary's anally made bed, and he frowned for a long moment down at what he had just both casually and thoughtlessly done, before picking his gloves up again and smoothing out the wrinkles with a stiff brush of the palm. Still in his boxing sneakers, his step was barely a whisper as he slid across the floor to hang the gloves on their appropriate hook behind the door. A moment of unnecessary devotion was spent fussing with the strings, tying each off in a tidy bow, before he was left again with the heavy silence of his own room. He turned again with a listless, tiny sigh. Was there anything left to do? Gary swept a critical eye across his very few things. He hoped to find  _ something _ out of alignment, some tiny object he hadn't yet found just the right position for.  But even as he looked, he knew it was only a frustrated, futile gesture. He was too meticulous to not have left his bedroom in perfect order before leaving for morning classes. 

 

Everything was as Gary had left it. As usual, everything was in it's place. There, his writing desk stood with the meticulous line of pens set on his green writing pad. Over there, his single wooden chair sat without a cushion, positioned at an exact right angle to where stacks of textbooks laid with the bindings perfectly aligned. The floor beneath him vibrated with another peal of thunder, barren of any rugs, perfectly swept and smooth of grit or debris. His bed was there, a stark green rectangle of scratchy Bullworth issued bedding beneath a pale stretch of blank wall. His gym bag offered a shock of red and yellow from where it sat next to the door, but everything else was the color of age. Faded paper. Worn linens. Dust. No posters hung in his room. There were none of the things that graced most other teenage boy's rooms on campus, even including the finer lifestyle offered here, in Harrington house. No comic books, or soccer balls, or half-eaten leftovers. No balls of wadded up paper, or nudie mags, or half-finished sheets of homework. No cassette tapes, or even a little FM radio, so common among students for study and for fun. There was only quiet, and a pointed absence. It had been a journey to figure out exactly what it was that Gary thought was absent, but now that he objectively recognized that Jimmy's presence in his life had changed so much, the emptiness of his bedroom felt all the more significant. The least he could do would be to maybe put up just  _ one _ poster…  it  couldn’t  _ hurt _ exactly, could it? Kierkegaard, maybe. Or Julius Caesar. It didn’t really matter either way. 

 

But then, the room wasn't entirely empty, was it? Smith turned his rumpled head, now cooled from the sweat of his earlier workout. There, there was the bureau against the back wall. Gary knew it held perfectly tidy rows of carefully folded clothes. Every collared shirt, every vest, specifically positioned to guard the presence of just one other.

 

One sweater that did not belong.

 

Gary didn't need to open his drawer to know the sweater Jimmy had stained with blood was still kept safe in the back of the bottom shelf. Or that a pack of gum Jimmy had given him and forgotten to take back was in the desk. Just like he didn't need to open his bedside drawer to find a host of crudely scribbled notes from Hopkins either.

 

_ Meet me in the tunnel at 9 tonight _

 

_ Dinner with Mom and Dad this weekend- Kill me _

 

_ Can't do Thursday, Saturday at the lighthouse- Do that thing you did in the school bus _

 

Finding his shoulders suddenly stiff, Gary grunted and brought a hand up to his neck as he rolled his head from side to side. These were little pieces of Jimmy he would have been actively hiding right now, if he hadn't already hidden them away. Zoe's accusations clung to him in a way he hadn't expected. She had been surprisingly nasty, but mostly it had been the sight of Jimmy's retreating back that had done it. Gary could have wiped it all away, pushed everything else to the side only to pick and choose the parts he would have liked to remember. But, Jimmy had gone with her in the end, hadn't he?  _ Wait _ , He'd said.  _ Wait for me. _ But that was a request Gary was quickly growing tired of hearing. He had never liked waiting. And now, the feeling was steadily creeping closer to hate, especially when it was Jimmy who was doing the requesting. The fact that he had chosen Zoe over him just made the request more vivid.

 

_ 'You're not his brother—you and your family are nothing but a dead weight tied around his neck that he's gonna cut off as soon as he's out of this place.'  _

 

Suddenly ice cold in the middle of his room, Gary raised a hand to wipe the chill sweat off his face before jerkily walking over to his bed and stiffly sitting. He yanked an ankle up to begin unlacing his shoe and quickly tore it off, throwing it against the far wall with a noisy thud. The next shoe came off more painfully, and also hit the wall. Zoe's slap hadn't hurt him. That, he could stand. That, he could forget with time. But despite everything, despite every piece of evidence Gary had to the contrary, she had struck a nerve. What would happen when they were free from this place? When they were of age? 18 wasn't far off. Only a year for Jimmy. What would he do? Where would they go? Or most importantly, would Jimmy even  _ want _ to come?

 

Raising a frustrated hand, Gary grunted as he pulled his sweat-soaked shirt off one-armed, and flung it on the floor. Then one sock, and then the other. He got up with the bubbling feeling that something had slipped through his fingers without his knowledge. That something had been taken from him and he hadn't even known it. A frustrated glance at the new wrinkles in his bed from where he had been sitting produced a suddenly explosive feeling of intolerance, and without thinking, he reached down and ripped the blankets with a violent jerk out of their perfect folds. When Gary threw the bedding back down on the mattress in a snarl, he felt his heart skip a beat, and then settle again. Sometimes, he liked the destruction just for the sake of itself. Even in little, harmless bursts like this, it was good to remind himself that he had the autonomy. There was no situation he had perfectly manicured that he couldn't also tear apart.  _ If he chose to. _ Smith's jaw tightened, and he turned to grab his towel.

  
  


The shower was hot, and grounding. Distantly, he remembered something about never showering during a thunderstorm, but a dark whisper in the back of his mind welcomed the risk. Maybe if he was struck by lightning he would wake up in a hospital bed and realize all of this had been part of some drug-induced liminal fantasy, and he would have a chance to start over again. Sadly, when he wasn't electrocuted, he moved on to brushing his teeth until his gums were raw. The next task found him shaving the first prickles of beard he would one day be able to grow in thick like his father. He turned the razor over in his fingers as he stood in front of the long bathroom dormitory mirrors, not thinking of turning it harmfully on himself, but recognizing it's power all the same.

 

It was with a calmer head that Gary pushed back into his bedroom again, a towel slung around his waist and another around his shoulders like the white fur cloak of a lord. Jimmy was sitting on his bed. He looked perfectly at home in the snarl of blankets, like he might have been sitting on his own bed back in the bad dorms. Gary blinked at him as a feeling of airlessness gripped his lungs, both surprised and not surprised at all to seem him, before narrowing his gaze and stalking across his room. He began pulling open drawers and selecting fresh clothes, making a tidy pile on the corner of his desk. A hand rose as he moved back and forth to grab a corner of his towel and vigorously rub at his hair, drying it.

 

"Has his majesty finished writing his peace treaty with the queen?" The question was a joke, but not entirely friendly.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Gary could see Jimmy's shoulders were still damp with droplets of rain. Derby's yacht party would have been ruined by the weather. The thought pulled half a smirk out of the corner of Gary's mouth, but not wishing to allow Jimmy to confuse the look with an attitude of felicity, instead he turned away again.

  
  
  
  


 

**JIMMY**

 

Jimmy frowned at Gary's tone, his turned back, and the fact that he was talking weird bullshit again.

 

"Uh... yes? I don't know? If you're talking about me and Zoe, then yeah--we're good. I was able to put out that particular fire,  _ you're welcome very much _ ."

 

"My hero," Gary muttered, his voice dripping with disdain as he continued to sort through his bureau.  

 

The furrow in his brows deepened.

 

"Wait a minute—you're pissed at  _ me?  _ Oh no, no no no. That's not how this is gonna go."

 

He vaulted himself off the bed, leaving behind a Jimmy-shaped stain of sweat and rainwater, and swiftly crossed the room. He shoved the pile of clothes messily against the wall and hopped up on the desk, placing his stout, shivering mass firmly between Gary and any attempt to be not naked. He counted off his irritations on his fingers. 

 

"Whatever it is, A. I didn't do it, B. I don't care, and C.  _ I'm _ the one who's mad at  _ you _ , actually. What the hell was that, man? Can you  _ please  _ manage to keep yourself out of public death matches with my ex?"

 

Gary remained turned away, and Jimmy fought in vain to remain annoyed as his eyes skated over Gary's form. Steam lines rose from his long back, his callow skin tinged unusually pink from his shower. Jimmy frowned, disappointed that Gary had already gotten a shower in. The truth was, he preferred him dirty. Disheveled Gary, off-balance Gary, sweaty, pungent and testosteroned Gary--that was the prize Jimmy'd been looking forward to after his race this evening. But somehow he'd messed up again, given Gary enough space to start collecting himself and building his wall. Jimmy would always tear it back down, but still. A shame to miss that window. 

 

"...seem to think that was the case." 

 

Jimmy was pulled out of his reverie. "What?"

 

"...Nothing. Anyway, she started it."

 

Even from where he was, Jimmy could see that Gary's shoulders were threaded with a strange tension. There was a kind of fragility there that Jimmy hadn't seen from Gary in a few months. At once he felt meaty and stupid, unsure of how to fix things. He decided to give Gary a bit more time to collect himself. 

 

As Gary ignored him, doing mysterious Gary things on the other side of the room, Jimmy idly pawed through some of his nearer possessions. The silence between them swelled with the pelting spring rain. It had been a bit of a risky move, to wait in the room for its owner to return. Jimmy hadn't known for sure it would be Gary who walked through that door. And if it had been anyone ELSE in Harrington House, he would have had a lot of explaining to do, seeing as he was expressly forbidden from the premises. But a cursory glance over the tidy little room had told him decisively that it belonged to Gary. Not in the decoration (because there WAS no decoration, the room was as drab and spartan as a Happy Volts cell) but in the details: the pens arranged in obsessive rows, the notes pinned to the corkboard written in cramped, schizophrenic hand. The abused boxing gloves hanging from the hook on the inside of the door, the only item in the room that looked properly used. 

 

But it also wasn't fully _ of _ Gary. He'd only lived here a year, and under the Gary smell and lemon-scented disinfectant was the stale mold and grime of Harrington money. Jimmy had now seen the old places that made Gary who he was. This wasn't one of them.

 

Still, it was getting rarer and rarer that Jimmy had the chance to invade a new area of Gary's life. This room was still largely, heretically  _ Jimmy-less _ , which he felt duty-bound to rectify. Twisting backward on the desk, his thick calves bumping a rhythm against its legs, he created disarray. He scrabbled noisily through a box of paperclips, twiddled one of Gary's pens and stuck it behind his year. He picked up a Latin textbook, its pages crisp and unfolded, and began to flip through it aimlessly. Its pages were completely free of the scribbles and obscene notes that peppered every book he owned. He pinned a page between his thumb and forefinger, grinned as it smudged with oil from his unwashed hands. 

 

The book was plucked out of his grasp, and his field of vision was filled with an irritated Gary Smith.

 

"Will you  _ please  _ keep your filth off of my things?"

 

Jimmy smirked up at him, obscenely pleased with Gary's sudden proximity. 

 

"Nuh uh," he replied, snaking his ankles around the back of Gary's knees, pulling him in closer. Gary continued to glower down at him, but he could feel a small unwinding of tension beginning to take place--whether it was Gary's or his own, he couldn't be fully sure. Gary was so warm and smelled so good, and Jimmy was desperately tired of pretending they were two different people. 

 

His eye caught on a smudge across Gary's cheekbone. His face clouded as he reached up with one hand to trace it, his other hand stabilized on Gary's back. 

 

"Your hands are freezing, James," Gary snarled, but he acquiesced. He wouldn't look Jimmy in the eye anymore, his eyes averted with a hint of strange misery.

 

It wasn't a smudge at all, but a mark. Gary had just been at boxing, and an illegal swipe to the face at Glass Jaw wouldn't have been out of the picture, but Jimmy knew this wasn't made by a boxing glove. He'd seen this kind of mark before. This was an indentation. The kind made when a ringed hand hit face. 

 

A dark anger began to uncoil in Jimmy's stomach. A lightning flash lit the room, followed quickly by a crash of thunder. 

 

_ Gary Sr. _

 

"When?" Jimmy snarled.

 

"Oh, an hour or so ago."

 

"FUCK," Jimmy shouted, and bolted up off the desk, sending Gary stumbling back from between his legs. Jimmy paced the floor, his eyes wild in a frenzy of filial murder fantasy. 

 

"I'm going to kill him," he babbled. "I know what we  _ said _ , I know about our  _ agreement _ to lie low and keep our heads down until we're out... but man, I don't know! I think he has to die. Luckily, I've already been thinking about this for a while. Just few months now--ok, not  _ much _ more than a year, anyway, and I really really think I can pull it off without getting caught. I just need some rat poison and--"

 

"James."

 

"--I heard you can get a shovel pretty cheap from the corner store, I've got plenty saved up from my winnings. The problem is going to be forging the suicide note, but I've been--"

 

" _ James. _ "

 

Jimmy looked down at the long fingers suddenly gripping his forearm. He traced the line up to Gary's face, where he was looking down at him with a faint, inscrutable smile. He enunciated this next part very carefully.

 

"Like I told you, she hit me first." 

 

Jimmy blinked at him for a few moments, his mouth ajar, before reality came rushing in.  _ Zoe.  _ With a sigh, he reached back up to cup Gary's cheek again, running a finger over the mark. He realized distantly that he was still shivering, though now he wasn't sure how much of it was from the cold.

 

"Geez, Gary. What  _ did _ you say to her, anyway?"

  
  
  


 

**GARY**

 

Gary snorted into the fingers ghosting across his cheek. "I told her you're my slave, and if she ever wants to see you again she needs to pay me fifty thousand dollars."

 

When Jimmy looked appalled, Gary rolled his eyes. A moment of silence passed as Jimmy shot back an accusatory frown.

 

"No, man. Seriously." His thick fingertips still lingered on the bruise, voice gentle. "What the hell did you do?"

 

"Nothing...  _ Seriously _ !"

 

What was  _ with _ the accusation? Was it so crazy to think that Gary had been minding his own business like any other regular jackoff? Was that not something people expected he could do? Would everything  _ always _ automatically default to his guilt? Gary's shoulders tensed again as he danced back a step, leaving Jimmy's cold hands hanging in empty air.

 

"You think this is  _ my _ fault? Why don't  _ you _ control  _ your _ lumberjack better? So  _ quick _ to  _ assume _ I had some sort of _ sinister plan _ , Jimmy-boy. But then again, I guess old habits die hard, don't they?"

 

"Come on, Gary, don't do that. You know it's not like that! Don't be a turd, okay? Not to me."

 

"You think I'm being a turd? Really mature vocabulary. Where did you pick that one up, Russel's retarded mother?"

 

"Yeah! you're being really shitty right now and it's pissing me off! So would you just quit it already?"

 

Instantly, Jimmy's words called an angry grin to Gary's mouth. With it came an old familiar rush of ice to the stomach, and the teenager knew even before uttering a single word that whatever he said next, he would regret. Smith gave a single incredulous huff, eyes skating the empty room for something to settle on. Anything would do, as long as it wasn't Jimmy. Because he would only find guilt there. Instead, Gary laughed at the ceiling.  _ Don't be a turd. _ "You're not the only one with old habits."

 

Hopkins threw his hands up with a groan, then slapped them back down again across the broad flats of his thighs. "Ok, you know what? Fine. Don't talk to me, keep your stupid secrets. I only risked both our skins to sneak in here, but fine. You wanna be an asshole? Enjoy it. I'll see you later." 

 

That was enough to get Gary's attention. His eyes instantly snapped back to Jimmy's soggy outline as the redhead turned on a muddy sneaker and headed for the door. Staring gobsmacked at his retreating figure, Gary forced himself into action only when he heard the knob turning.

 

"Jimmy!"

 

The breathless name was past his lips and gone before Gary internalized how desperate he had sounded in the moment. Appalled at himself, he tried to tighten up his slackjaw expression, but ended up with something more closely resembling worried shock. Apparently the fear translated, because Jimmy froze halfway over the threshold and turned to regard the taller boy with a healthy level of confusion.

 

The silence stretched. Gary opened his mouth once to say something, but was overrun by the dramatic shift in his own emotions. Panic, fully realized and overwhelming, had seized him in the space of a single breath. Now, he regarded James with an incredulity he realized was not of his own creation. If there had ever been any doubt that Jimmy had an undue level of control over Gary's feelings, that question had now vanished. Without anyone to love, Gary had habitually turned his excesses in on himself, and more harmfully, outwards. Now that Jimmy held that position, it was sometimes nearly impossible to delegate appropriate reactions. A long, sick wave rippled through Smith as the nearly dead Gary of the past returned to cluck disdainfully at how hard the current Gary had fallen. At what a joke it was to be so entirely beholden to a single freckled miscreant. What a disaster.

 

_ 'you and your family are nothing but a dead weight tied around his neck that he's gonna cut off as soon as he's out of this place!' _

 

Gary blinked in wounded silence, bewildered.

 

"What? Gary, what are you-?"

 

But he was already moving. Gary pressed forward, quickly stepping up to Jimmy and pushing him across the threshold and into the hallway. They stopped when Jimmy's back hit the wall and Gary quickly maneuvered himself in close, then closer, warmly, firmly. The intimacy of it was striking, even to Gary himself as he did it, when so recently he had been so morally opposed to human touch of any kind. After a beat, he lifted the white towel off of his neck and slung it instead around Jimmy, first to pull him in, and then to buffet his gesture when he reached up both hands and smoothed them down the sides of the stocky teenager's face. Gary spent a careful moment there, letting his thumb run along Jimmy's jawline with a strange tenderness he had discovered, seemingly, almost by accident. He didn't need to think of dead things, or his mother, or his meticulously stacked textbooks to summon up the sensation of tenderness anymore. He just needed Jimmy. Jimmy looking at him strangely, like now. Annoyed and confused.  Jimmy looking at him in anger, so similar to his look of lust, red-cheeked and glassy-eyed. Jimmy just looking at him with that idiot face he sometimes made, barren of any expression at all. Just Jimmy. As long as Jimmy kept looking, somehow everything might still be fine.  _ Maybe _ .

 

"You can stay a little longer." It sounded like a command, but when Gary closed the distance to touch the tacky skin of their lips together, they both knew it wasn't.  

  
  
  


 

** JIMMY **

 

_ Finally. _

 

Jimmy's hands were filled with the scarred skin of Gary's back, his mouth with pleading tongue and teeth, and everything else just faded. The world narrowed to the single point of spacetime they occupied together, and Jimmy sighed the conviction into Gary's mouth that nothing else about their lives really  _ mattered _ . Not their parents, not Zoe's anger. Not cliques or grades or fights or even fucking. Not even the past, not even the future. 

 

Not the creak of a nearby floorboard, just barely drowned by the rain. 

 

Just sharing breath with this one person,  _ his  _ person, right now. Gary knew it too, Jimmy could tell by the inflection of his humming throat and the way his hands shivered slightly, so slightly, on his neck. For a moment there was just peace, and a space he was privately, hopefully starting to call  _ home _ . 

 

Finally, Jimmy brought both palms gently to Gary's clavicle and separated them in a gasp of air. They'd been having a conversation at some point, several years ago it felt like, and it prickled unfinished in Jimmy's mind. He tipped his head back and looked at Gary with lidded eyes, his cheek pressed hard into Gary's hand. His teeth scuffed Gary's palm as he spoke.

 

"I don't really care what happened, Gary. I just... want you to not fight with her, if you can. Obviously, defend yourself, but... Zoe is important to me. And I think she's going through a tough time. Don't get me wrong, I don't like that she hit you, and I  _ really wish _ I could tell her off for getting into it with you--but we both know that's probably not the best idea right now. It's easiest if she--and everybody else in this stupid town--keeps thinking we hate each other."

 

He saw Gary's face changing in slow motion, and he moved quickly to finish his thought, gripping Gary's shoulders with deadly conviction.

 

"BUT. You  _ have to get this through your skull _ ... Zoe is and always will be my friend, and I  _ never _ had this with her. What I have with you is different. It's... more.  _ Don't get in your head _ ." 

 

What he wanted to say, but didn't have the words for, was that it was really hard sometimes to not just scream from the roof of Bullworth that he and Gary were  _ fucking incredible _ . He found himself fantasizing about doing all the stupid PDA stuff other couples did, when he knew for a fact that they gave a  _ fraction of a fuck  _ for each other what he cared for Gary Smith. He wanted to be able to slip his hand up Gary's back when they walking down the hall, to touch his stupid hair. To sit with him at lunch, not having to trade Pete between them like a child of divorce. 

 

He wanted to take Gary to the fucking  _ prom _ . 

 

He wanted to show up in matching finery together, like the kings they were, to be able to kiss in dark corners without fear of retribution. He'd go with Zoe and be happy to support her, but he knew what he wanted now, and it was so much more.

 

And it would have to wait. There was too much on the line.

 

Gary slumped forward over Jimmy's shoulder, pressing his face into the side of Jimmy's neck. Either he was annoyed, or embarrassed, or fighting some unknown head demon, or he could read Jimmy's thoughts and he too was mourning a life they couldn't have. No way to know, really. Gary had a way of being inscrutable. And  _ petulant.  _

 

"Don't think you're getting away by hiding your face," Jimmy laughed into Gary's hair, his breath wafting the damp strands. 

 

Gary made a noncommittal noise.

 

"I'm serious. You and me."

 

"You smell like a wet dog," Gary complained, without removing any of himself from Jimmy's smell proximity.

 

" _ Gary," _ he warned.

 

Gary bit him. 

 

"Good enough," Jimmy sighed. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something move in the dark of the hall. His pulse jumped against Gary's teeth. But lightning lit the space a few seconds later, and nothing was there.

 

Jimmy sighed as the thunder rumbled. He pried Gary's mouth off his throat.

 

"Come on, let's get out of this creepy hallway. I wanna suck your dick somewhere stupid."

  
  
  


 

 

**PETEY**

 

The stink bomb shattered against the wall in a gaseous hiss, breaking Petey’s focus instantly.  With a  cry of disgust he lept up from his seat at the dorm poker table, sending his chair clattering back across the floor until it hit the edge of the Future Street Race cab with a metallic clang. 

 

“Ugh! Oh, _come_ _on_!”  His hands were instantly in the air, waving frantically in front of his face. 

 

But just as quickly as it had come, the green fog enveloped them and then dissipated, leaving Petey’s eyes running twin tracks of slime, and his nose dripping sadly. Next to him, Algernon had also been caught in the crossfire. Now he stood wheezing and groping in his pocket for his inhaler. As Petey palmed his eyes in an attempt to smother the sting, he could hear the amused guffaw of Trent and Russell as they retreated back out into the hallway.  Another stink bomb went off, this time in the distance. Petey sighed as the resulting smash and screams of dismay echoed down the corridor.

 

“I thought Jimmy talked to them…” Petey mumbled with faint hurt, his eyes finally clear. Bending down, he scooped his chair back up and set it with a heavy thunk back at the table. Algie shot him a thoroughly disgusted look before hitting his inhaler hard, then waddling over to his own chair and shimmying back down into it.

 

“Oh Please, Peter. Don’t be so categorically idiotic! Do you really think those barbarous gorillas will ever treat us any differently? Granted, ever since your precious Jimmy took the throne, they’ve seemed a little, ehh,  _ distracted _ . Heh heh! But it’s of no consequence. Once a bully, always a bully. It’s in their DNA!” 

It was a valid point.  Jimmy, out of anyone Petey knew, certainly had been…  _ distracted _ , as of recently. For a number of reasons. Pete let his gaze flick down as he internalized that. Though the abuse had certainly decreased since Jimmy’s reign, it hadn’t ever  _ fully _ dissipated. Not to mention Jimmy hadn’t exactly been reinforcing the laws he’d laid out over the last year. Not really. Not unless it was right in front of his nose. Even when Petey had been Head Boy, he had still been subject to abuse. And maybe it would never stop. In the most realistic version of this world, Peter Kowalski belonged in a campus waste paper bin with his pants wedgied so hard up his butcrack that his underwear had ripped. A sigh cut gently through Pete’s pursed lips, and he rubbed a hand across his eyes one last time. 

 

On the table, instead of the usual cards and poker chips, a complex stack of papers sat in various stages of grading. Over the last semester, Pete had enlisted Algernon and Cornelius to assist him with a small tutoring business which had quickly grown in size and scale. After a furious internal debate over the ethics of selling papers to lazy and/or corrupt students, it had in the end been the G&G club who had convinced Pete to finally commit to the endeavor. This school was a bad place. It was and always had been ugly here, full of bad people with bad intentions. There was no getting around that one. So why NOT play the game? Use what you have, Bucky always said. If you can cast a level 15 hypnosis enchantment on a gaggle of orcs, why wouldn’t you? If you were already getting punched, then at least this way you’d get paid too.  

 

“Jimmy’s different.” Pete mumbled, busying his hands with a stack of geometry worksheets. He fussed with the papers, tapping them straight on the soft surface of the table. When Algie snorted, he pulled his gaze back up. 

 

Algernon had picked up a red pencil and was gesturing at Petey with it now as if it were a magic wand. His face was smug. 

 

“That  _ goon _ ? No way, jose!  Maaayyybe last year, sure. I’ll give you that. But now that the  _ sociopath _ is back?  _ Heh _ ! Don’t make me laugh.”

 

“Jimmy’s still the king!” Pete interjected, sitting up straighter as his shoulders tensed. 

 

“Yeah.  _ Sure _ . Barely.”

 

“Well if he’s not, then who is?”

 

Algie shifted in his chair to more fully face Petey, settling one fat forearm on the history papers he had been spell checking. He seemed equal parts incredulous and self-satisfied, his double chin puffing out like an agitated bird as he adjusted his spectacles. 

 

“Sweet, simple Petey. You can’t see it, can you?” 

 

“What? Come on, don’t do that!” Petey mirrored Algernon’s posture, growing agitated. “What are you talking about?”

 

“I’m talking about  _ Jimmy _ , you ignoramus!” The nerd glanced in both directions before leaning forward with a conspiratorial whisper. “ _ He’s out _ ! Everyone’s talking about it. Ever since his mom married into that family of  _ psychos _ , he’s been as useless as a jock in the mathletes! He doesn’t actually  _ do anything _ anymore, except mope around with those greaser hooligans or shout at that serial killer, Gary Smith. But half the school year is over and they’re  _ both still standing. _ Don’t you find that  _ suspicious _ ? Well  _ I _ say, if Gary Smith isn’t planning on throwing Jimmy off another building and taking the crown back for  _ himself _ , it’s only a matter of time before someone  _ else _ does!”

 

It was surprising how sharply the wave of indignation hit him. Pete abruptly stood up again, eliciting a surprised jerk backwards from Algie. “It’s not _ like that _ anymore! You don’t even  _ know _ Gary.” 

 

Algernon glanced down at Petey’s fingers, which were now putting wrinkles into his stack of math papers, before loudly sucking in a loud nose full of snot. He looked back up at Petey without sympathy. 

 

“And you  _ do _ ? Heh, why?  Because that nutjob has been pushing you in the dirt since before you hit puberty? That’s so plebeian, Peter. Jimmy’s going to leave you high and dry, you have to choose a side! Just face it! You  _ aren’t _ cool. Heh heh, and those jerk bullies are just going to walk all over you like they do to everybody else! Are you with us, or aren’t you? Remember, once a bully,  _ always a bully _ !”

“That’s just a… just a really outdated way of looking at things!” Petey heard the doubt in his own voice, and somehow it made him angrier. “Jimmy helped me out a lot! I mean, he didn’t have to, but he did! Me! Pete Kowalski! He’s my best friend! I was Head Boy! He gave that to me! I trust him, even if you don’t!”

 

“Head Boy? Sure it looks good on applications, but what did it, ehh,  _ get _ you? Like actually?” 

 

“Lots of things!” Valiantly, Pete tried to forget the extra noogies he had received since accepting the title. All the times he had been stuffed in the trashcan for being a  _ goody two-shoes _ , for being a  _ bootlicker _ , for being an _ ass kisser _ .

 

Algernon saw straight through to the truth. “Yeah,” he scoffed, “okay.”

 

“You think you’re smart, but you’re not!” Pete shouted, and threw his fistfull of papers across the table.  Algie squealed as they knocked his glasses ajar, and as he fumbled to recover himself, Petey used the opportunity to turn on one heel and stalk out of the common room. He ignored the nervy chatter of gossiping nerds that followed him, instead choosing to yank his rain jacket off the end of his bedframe and to stomp out into the rainy night.    

 

Thunder rumbled in the distance as Peter shuffled down the walk. The storm was already receding, but a light rain still pattered gently against his hood. Water collected, then slid in fat drops down the brim, occasionally touching his flushed cheeks with an icy kiss. He barely felt it. He even welcomed the weather at the moment, thankful for the lack of foot traffic impeding his furious exit.  

 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Petey knew he should be embarrassed. His reaction didn’t objectively make any sense, if he really thought about it. What did the nerds care about who was on the throne? If it wasn’t one of them, it hardly seemed to matter. Algie was right, though Petey was angry to admit it. Bullies were bullies were bullies were  _ always _ going to be bullies. They could sing a different song from time to time, but things didn’t ever really change. Some things stayed the same; the earth rotated, the sun came up and went down, and losers would always get tortured. It hadn’t even been that long ago since Gary was splitting Petey’s lip on the common room floor. AFTER he had been Head Boy. So why did nothing ever work out in Petey’s favor? He thought about the way Gary had been when they were younger, mean-eyed and whip thin as he tore around the back yard tormenting cats. He would always be that little boy, even if Jimmy had changed his mind about a few other things.      

 

Pete’s eyes abruptly jerked up from where they had previously been skating the wet pavement. What was that noise? 

 

... _ Laughter _ ?

 

How could anybody  _ possibly _ be happy about anything today? Pete grumbled as he scanned the horizon. Sure enough, it took only a moment of hunting before he discovered the source of the troublesome sound.  A little distance up the walk, Angie and Beatrice were giggling and leaning over something on the ground. Angie stood taller, a blue umbrella in her hand, while Beatrice knelt, and the girls appeared to be chattering excitedly with one another in a low, reverent tone.  Petey approached curiously, and as he rounded their shoulders, he saw they were picking from a flush of early spring wildflowers. Beatrice turned from her kneel by the violet blossoms at the sound of Peter’s sneakers, and he saw as she looked up that she had tucked a spray of the raindrop-dappled flowers behind one ear.   

“Oh hello, Peter! We found a rare strand of Hepatica Nobilis, isn’t it lovely?”

 

_ It was _ lovely.  _ She _ was lovely. Petey’s face turned pink at his own revelation, though his expression grew surly.  __

 

_ You  _ aren’t _ cool, and those jerk bullies are just going to walk all over you like they do to everybody else! _

 

“WILL YOU GO TO THE PROM WITH ME, BEATRICE?” Petey suddenly blurted in a loud voice, shocking Angie into dropping her umbrella. There was an immediate scramble of distressed shrieking and flailing before everyone made it back under the safety of cover, after which a deafening silence fell.  Pete held his chin stiffly out as le looked nervously between Beatrice and Angie, who both stood staring at him, aghast.

 

“Peter! I ...wasn’t aware you so adamantly…” Beatrice sounded breathless after the lurch of silence, the pattering of rain on their umbrella accenting the mood. “I mean, I didn’t expect that you…”    

 

“That’s not the question!” Petey took an aggressive step forward, exhausted by always being the punching bag. How long would he have to tolerate being a campus laughing stock? Jimmy and Gary had come to terms with one another, and now it was Petey’s turn to grow. He could chase after people and write papers for money and quietly read his books, but when would things get any better for  _ him _ ?

 

“You’ll either say yes and go to the prom with me, or you won’t!” The words tumbled out, each on top of the next. “So what’s your answer?”  

 

“Oh! I, I…” Somewhere along the line, Beatrice’s face had gone from surprised to intrigued. She glanced at Angie, who burst into a toothy smile, before looking back and nodding. “Yes, Peter, I will attend the Prom with you as your date!” 

 

“GOOD!” Petey shouted again, causing both girls to jump.

 

When Petey pivoted and stomped off in the opposite direction, he heard Angie’s surprised whisper through the thick air as if she were still just behind him. 

 

_ “Doesn’t Petey seem  _ taller _ recently?” _

  
  
  
  


Through passing sheets of mist, the distant upper level windows of Harrington House twinkled in the dark. Pete’s footsteps halted just outside the archway to the fanciest campus dorm, and he paused to admire the beauty of the facade in rain. After the main building, Harrington House had exactly the kind of Georgian charm that sold the school in brochures to wealthy families with too many rotten sons. It was unnecessarily beautiful… even a little arrogant, much like its wealthy residents.  It appeared almost  _ more _ beautiful in the wet darkness, which seemed unfair. Even the flag, saturated and hanging low, seemed to swing back and forth with a sluggish kind of dignified elegance. Petey likened the building to the stern face of a disliked uncle. Handsome, but also strange and distant, possibly with sinister intent. Like a lot of things about Bullworth, Harrington House exuded a sense of secrecy, riddled beneath with ominous undertones. But it also promised possibility, just as much as it promised threat. Pete thought that if it had been a dormitory open every kind of student, he might have loved it intensely.  But, of course,  it wasn’t. 

 

Pete sighed again in the rain, thinking on how many times he had recently been making exactly that sound. Why had he come here, again? Something about Algernon. Something he had said.  _ Once a bully, always a bully. _ The truth of it had stung Petey as sharply as the thorn of a bee. Because most times, it was unquestionably true. But Algernon didn’t know everything, Pete concluded stubbornly to himself. He stiffly folded his arms across his chest, making his raincoat squeak.  Beatrice had somehow miraculously agreed to go to the prom with him, Petey wondered over. And all because he had DECIDED to go against the norm. To CHANGE.  Algie’s SAT scores could be out of this world,  but he didn’t really know anything about people. How much could someone know about people who only had friends exactly like themselves? Algie talked a big talk, but as far as walking the walk he didn’t know squat. He didn’t know Jimmy. Not really. And he  _ certainly _ didn’t know Gary. Pete wasn’t entirely sure that even Gary knew himself, much less anyone else.

 

Glancing up at one flickering gold window as he thought of Gary, Pete finally let a faint smile touch him. Somewhere inside, Jimmy was with his sour friend. His thought process shifted, evolving in truth and intensity. Things had been so different, recently.  _ Gary _ had been different, in a way Petey had always believed he would never see. Algernon was wrong. People DID change. They were complex creatures, subject to infinite variables. Petey hadn’t thought it when they had first met, the three of them together,  but they were better because of their time together. Gary had always been cruel. Jimmy had been indifferent and dismissive. And Pete had been a coward. But things were changing now, weren’t they? Weren’t they all starting, somehow, to heal? Or was all of this just part of the cosmic poetic joke of growing up? As long as nobody was kicking Petey in the balls anymore, that, at the  _ very _ least, was a good thing. He could consider  _ that _ progress. Maybe,   _ just maybe _ , not everything was a hopeless case. 

 

Breathing a little easier, suddenly _ feeling better _ , Pete was about to turn and head back to the boy’s dorm when the heavy double doors to Harrington House flew open and slammed against the exterior with a dramatic clang. Kowalksi froze.  Bursting through with an armful of rain gear thundered Bif Tremblay, enormous and looming in the way only a mountain could be. He seemed agitated, and stormed down the walkway with a singular look of angry focus. Pete’s heart skipped a beat when he saw it for a reason he couldn’t entirely understand, and as Bif approached he drew back a few cautious steps. 

 

“Out of the way,  _ faggot _ !” Bif yelled as he stomped past, clearly unimpeded, and yet taking an extra step out of his way to shove Petey in the chest as hard as he could.  Petey flew backwards with all the grace of a ragdoll and hit the wet concrete with a loud “oof!”, skidding a good foot and a half before making sharp contact with the brick wall. Bif had vanished down the path before Pete could even take stock of himself, and for long minutes, he laid still, bent strangely against the base of the wall as he let the rain soak into his clothes. 

 

Once a bully, always a bully. 

 

Pete slowly, slowly, sighed. 

  
  


“I say, you’ll never get the stains out if you let the filthy rain soak into your knit.” 

 

Hovering on the edge of tears, Petey glanced up to behold yet another surprise; as if materializing out of the fog itself, Gord Vendome had appeared. The prep was looking down at Petey with mild, haughty pity from beneath a gargantuan umbrella, a burgundy silk scarf fluttering in the breeze on top of what had to be his version of business casual yachting attire. Droplets of glittering rain beaded on his jacketed shoulders like diamonds, making Gord look every inch the fashionable prince he was. 

 

“You will absolutely not _believe_ what that lapdog Bif just told me he saw in the dormitory just now!” Gord gloated, suddenly wearing the expression of the cat that caught the canary. “Or? Hmm, you know? Maybe _you_ would. I was right all along! I often am, but, can you _actually_ _believe_ it? I mean, really. How absolutely juicy! Jimmy and that _Smith_ boy are-”

 

“ _ What _ ?” Pete barked the interruption, every alarm bell sounding off in tandem in his head. Fear swelled like a terrible ocean wave. And then, suddenly, everything was too much. Hot liquid began streaking down his cheeks, and Pete began to openly sob in the rain. When he raised a muddy hand to rub in a grubby smear across his face, Gord looked appalled.

 

“My  _ God _ , Kowalski, I didn’t tell you your  _ inheritance _ has been willed away! This is terribly undignified.”

 

_ “Why is everybody trying to tell me how to behave, today? _ ” Pete moaned through a veil of ugly tears.   _ “What’s wrong with me? _ ” 

 

Gord snorted in disgust before reaching down to clasp one strong hand around Petey’s upper arm. With a harsh yank, be pulled the soggy teenager back up to his feet. His lip curled distastefully, the prep sucked his teeth as he swiped a few dead leaves from Petey’s shoulders. Petey stifled himself as he felt the gesture. Wiping his nose on his sleeve with a hiccup, he looked up. 

 

“...Why are you being so nice to me?” 

 

“This  _ isn’ _ t a charity, Kowalski.”  Gord looked mildly disapproving. “It’s just that we share a secret now, don’t we,  little chap? And  _ secrets _ are almost as good as currency here, you know. About that crazy friend of yours and Jimmy Hopkins? You still holding a torch for that gloomy Smith fellow?”

 

“...H-How did you-?” 

 

“Please,” Vendome pursed his lips and flipped his scarf back with a practiced flick of the wrist. “I’m not  _ oblivious _ to these sorts of things.”

 

“Beatrice is going to the prom with me.” Petey deadpanned, feeling exhausted as his tears ebbed. Gord rolled his eyes and looked off into the distance towards Harrington House, boredom already glazing him over. 

 

“Ugh,  _ that’s _ nice.”    
  


 

“And there’s no competing with Jimmy, anyway.”

 

Lightning silently flashed in a spill of white light across the walkway and was gone again. When Petey looked up, Gord was looking at him again with an unnerving intensity. 

 

“So it  _ is _ true.”  The words were awed, soft and wondering. 

 

Maybe he had said too much. Had he said too much? Panic bubbled up sharp and hot in Petey’s chest as Gord’s expression morphed from shocked to unbelievably entertained. Too much. DEFINITELY TOO MUCH. Pete stepped forward again and opened his mouth to rebut his own point when Gord reached out and smacked his cheek twice in sharp affection. The shorter boy flinched, his face radiating heat. What was happening??

 

“Well  _ done _ , pauper! You know, Bif isn’t the brightest crayon in the box, and I wasn’t  _ entirely _ sure his testimony could be trusted. Now, I’ve had my  _ suspicions _ , as previously discussed, with all that sweater business and all, but….  But you!  _ Oh _ , my little friend. I  _ humbly _ thank you, and I do hope we’ll do business together again! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some blackmailing to attend to.”

 

“Wait!” A hand went out after Gord’s shoulder as if trying grab his words back out of the air.  “Stop! I didn’t mean-!” 

 

But it was too late. With a wicked twinkle in his eye, Gord quickly flounced down the walkway and was gone.  In a only a moment he had merrily entered Harrington House through the heavy double doors, leaving Petey standing alone in the rain, drenched.   

 

Kowalski stood stunned in his newfound silence. There was nothing he could do. No way to warn anyone, no way to stop what was happening. All he could do was hope Gary was smart enough to deal with this. That Jimmy would somehow be able to strike a bargain. 

 

And..? Petey gave a woeful, exhausted look at the glittering windows. 

 

That they both still had their pants on. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoooolllyyyy shit you guys, look who's back! Sorry for the hiatus as team Friends & Bros dealt with some Real Life Stuff and worked on other projects for a minute there. For those of you who don't know yet, in honor of Bully's 10th anniversary you can now play this excellent game on your phone! (wow, we've come so far in ten years!) Thanks to this fandom for being the most devoted, the most loving! Friends & Bros is back on track and honing in on the end, so for those of you still taking this journey with us, expect way more toilets to explode before all is said and done. See you next time!


	12. Thunderstorm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gord puts Jimmy and Gary in a pinch. Gary makes a dangerous promise.

  
  
  
  


**GARY**

 

The lamp shattered on the floorboards as Gary roughly swept everything off his desk, and unceremoniously shoved Jimmy down on it instead. The redhead hit the wood with a grunt of pain, and the sound was more than enough to call a hungry grin across Gary’s parted lips as he sunk down low over his agitated stepbrother. His fingers found a sensitive crevice to pinch, and twisted down hard. Gary also noted, with what was an unhealthy level of interest, that the forearm braced across his chest wasn’t exactly  _ shoving him off,  _ was it? But then, that was their game. Jimmy liked to complain. He grunted and moaned like he hated it, but sometimes,  _ just sometimes  _ , he liked it when things hurt. Just like this.  _ Just a little  _ . And tonight there would be more than enough time to swallow up Jimmy’s angry protestations.

“Fuck! Don’t step in the glass-” Jimmy hissed, and he craned his neck over the desk at an awkward angle to look at the broken lamp. Gary fisted the redhead’s collar with a grin and jerked it back towards him, a clear indication of his total lack of interest in that subject.

 

“~Didn’t know you  _ cared _ so much...” His words hummed out in a bored breath, tickling Jimmy’s throat beneath his chin.

 

“Hey, glass in your foot ain't a joke. That shit hurts! Speaking from personal experience over here.”  

 

Smith bit back a snort of laughter. “Like I’d ever be that stupid.”

 

Hopkins finally showed some backbone and shoved Gary’s hand away, though the gesture only prompted Gary to slide his now conveniently free fingers down Jimmy’s thick thigh instead. Gary lingered to squeeze the meaty glute he found there, then yanked the entire leg up his side.

Though he had dropped his own towel a while ago, Gary noticed with a dull note of surprise that he didn’t seem to care about it at the moment. He didn’t care, even though Jimmy had remained fully clothed the whole time. The realization had come whole, and perfectly formed. According to Gary’s internal logic, Jimmy should have the power right now. His soggy racing clothes had even begun to bunch up between their bodies and mash together until chilly rainwater ran in rivulets down Gary’s legs.  He hadn’t noticed. (A hard dick was one hell of a distraction, the clinical, internal Gary had been eventually forced to admit.) Not until the chilly temperature had brought that particular realization on.  

Gary didn’t let himself dwell on the destruction of his meticulously arranged desk, either. Instead, more and more often these days he was realizing he perversely enjoyed just the simple act of breaking things.  Not for the challenge. Not for a grander purpose. Just destruction. Carnage for carnage’s sake. It felt… different now, somehow.  It had always been satisfying to break things. Because he  _ could  _ . Because he  _ wanted to  _ . Because he  _ chose to  _ do it. But Jimmy had altered his perception. (Really, his  _ entire world view _ , if he was going to be totally honest with himself.) Before, Gary liked to break things because he wanted to change the horrible world around him. Later, he broke things because Jimmy was his immovable rival, the one who could never be broken, no matter how many plans got laid, or bricks got thrown. Now that things were different, breaking too had changed its qualities. Now that Gary had finally accepted his feelings, Jimmy had a way of making all the horrible details about the world just a little less painful. When the lamp hit his floor, it had almost felt like a release.  _ Satisfying  _ .  

Like it was satisfying to break the person under him. To pull distorted chokes of pain out of Jimmy. Unbreakable, immovable, reliable. Strong enough to take the best and the  _ worst  _ of him.  _ That  _ was the task Gary was currently doubling down on, using military precision to unzip Jimmy’s jeans only to slip a cold hand down the front of his boxers, making him gasp. The sound pulled an echoing grunt out of Gary, and he pushed forward until their tongues tangled together again in a frenzied battle for control.

Sometimes, this was easier. Doing  _ just this,  _ and not talking. This same, strange activity that Gary had been so disgusted by for so long had somehow become a safe haven. Sometimes, it was the safest thing they could do.  Like so many other inexplicable things he did, Jimmy had broken the mold here too.  Jimmy Hopkins, who thought band-aids were a waste of time, and who could shoot a spitball ripped straight out of a textbook from thirty feet away had somehow managed to win out against Gary’s oldest psychological guards. Jimmy touched him, and  _ somehow _ , Gary was  _ compelled _ to touch him back. Jimmy Hopkins? Who looked like an upright pig? And talked like a disenchanted dropout with a third grade reading level? THAT Jimmy? Sometimes the shock of falling in love with Hopkins  _ still  _ resonated . And being physical with him was one of the best ways to avoid words. Words somehow  _ always  _ still managed to get Gary in trouble, despite his best efforts to use them for good.

It had been a strange night, all things considered. Gary disliked being forced to run the gamut of emotions against his will, but unfortunately for him, nothing quite like problems with Jimmy forced that out. And on top of that, nothing like not quite knowing where he stood made Gary angry. He was a creature of surety. If he wasn’t  _ sure  _ , he wasn’t  _ involved  _ .

 

Though he was too petulant to admit it, Zoe scared him. Without thinking any deeper, Gary slipped a hand beneath the soggy shirt he found and gouged a deep, hot track down Jimmy’s torso. The redhead’s response was a garbled hiss, and Smith yearned towards him as Jimmy’s thick fingers grabbed the back of his neck and clung there. Gary knew that his fear, like always, would turn to anger. If he wasn’t careful, Zoe would force his hand, make him act outside of his own logic. She was dangerous. She was a  _ lumbering, drug-addled she-bigfoot in too much makeu  _ p, but she was going to be a problem.  

So then, wasn’t it better to turn all his frustrations towards... this? Gary doubled down on the body beneath him, ripping Jimmy’s fly open and bending to lick the pink tip once before rising again to slick their tongues together. Otherwise, that fear could easily turn into shredding knives, and Jimmy would once again be on the receiving end of a different sort of violence. There was too much  Mr. Smith in the things Gary did when he was angry. Maybe doing this was healthier.  _ Stay calm. Stay calm . Don’t get angry _ . It had become a mantra of sorts. Though by this point, Gary grudgingly knew his opinion about what was healthy and what wasn’t was questionable at best.   

 

“ _ Ouch  _ ! Jesus, you psycho!” Jimmy gasped, pulling their mouths apart before wiggling back from Gary’s looming weight. “You trying to dig splinters into my ass or what?”

 

“You think that’s  _ all  _ I’m going to give you?”

 

When Jimmy’s arm came up to hook an elbow around Gary’s neck, pulling him savagely down at a hard angle, Gary jerked forward with his hips until Jimmy’s spine dug painfully into the wood of the desk. Smith swallowed the muted exclamation of anger out of Jimmy’s mouth again and let himself be dragged down farther. He kept himself from fully relenting when he hit the desk with a heavy palm, straining to hold both their weights apart as his hand slipped down and picked up a rhythm in Jimmy’s pants. The desk thudded noisily against the wall as Gary rocked them into it.

 

Their situation wasn’t simple, and, in reality, it probably wouldn’t ever be. But it had, at the very least, been a little easier when Gary had just been required to hate. Hating Jimmy Hopkins had been one of the easiest things in the world to do. It had come so naturally. So freely.  And in some ways, he would never be free of that hatred. But in an equally twisted way, his love had become the same thing. Indulging in the violence of his feelings let Gary be the truest version of himself. And, miraculously, against every lesson being alive had taught him thus far, Jimmy had welcomed him with open arms.

 

“Come the fuck on, Gary! Stop bullshitting around!” Jimmy chastised, sounding thick as he forced the words out through clenched teeth.

 

“I thought you said you didn’t like this?”

 

“When the hell did I say that?”

 

With an airy laugh, Gary buried his face in Jimmy’s neck, nosing up to his ear.  “Hmm,  _ something something,  _ splinters in your ass,  _ something  _ .”  

 

His hand let go of Jimmy’s dick and grazed lower, tracing his hole. James jerked against the touch, and his orange wreck of a human face turned progressively redder. Smith grinned against Jimmy’s neck, feeling the boy beneath him begin to shake. This embarrassed, angry look on Jimmy was  _ always  _ rewarding.  The feeling of satisfaction tripled when Smith heard the tremor in Jimmy’s voice.

“I should beat the shit out of you!”

Invitation accepted. Gary hastily ripped Jimmy backwards off the desk, then spun him clumsily around. They made short work together of peeling Jimmy out of his soggy shirt when Gary’s hands, already moving too fast, spun Jimmy back again with a desperate level of ungraceful force. Jimmy was  _ his  _ . Wasn’t he? Nobody else’s. This was the only way Gary could make it true. He couldn’t afford to be afraid of what  _ might  _ happen in the future. Jimmy belonged to him  _ now  _ .

“Don’t take your hands off the desk.”  Gary commanded, wrapping a hand around Jimmy’s throat from behind, even as his other hand slid to hook a thumb in the back waistband of Jimmy’s pants. With a hard jerk, he yanked them down.

  
  


_ KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK _

  
  


Simultaneously, both boys froze. There was a long, pregnant silence in which they exchanged glances, Jimmy’s shock in equal proportion to Gary’s incensed look of anger. NOBODY came to Gary’s room. Derby occasionally rapped on the door with the brief announcement of a dormitory meeting before leaving again without conversation. But who knocked, and then...  _ waited  _ ? Gary didn’t  _ have  _ friends. Who was even home? Had they already blown their cover? Had the thunderstorm ruined the yacht party? Had someone heard their careless wrestling, when they were too lost in the heat of the moment? Who could POSSIBLY be outside the door? Gary’s mind spun out wildly.  

_ KNOCK KNOCK _

An effeminate voice emanated from the hallway. “Oh, for  _ goodness  _ sake, Hopkins, don’t be such a wilting lily,  I  _ know  _ you’re in there!”

  
  


Gord.

  
  
  
  


**JIMMY**

 

 

_ Hopkins?  _ Jimmy watched the color of rage drain from Gary’s face as the weight of his name settled on both of their minds.

Another loud knock, and the boys scattered like alleyway rats from a dumpster.

 

"Open up, peasants, unless you want the rest of Harrington to know what  _ I  _ know."

 

Jimmy lurched for Gary's dresser, wrenched open a drawer and sent a fistful of clothing flying in Gary's direction. Jimmy's own clothes lay in a dejected puddle in front of Gary's desk; Gary kicked them underneath, leaving a shining smear of rainwater across the floorboards.

 

"I'm waiting~" sang the voice from the hall. "Come on, don’t be shy. You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen before. In Jimmy's case,  _ literally  _ ..."

 

Jimmy seized the arm of a sweater, tucked deep in the drawer but unearthed from his frantic scrambling. He registered something stiff and strange about it as he slid it on over his head and shoulders, but didn’t have the time or frame of mind to figure out what it was. Behind him he could hear Gary in the dishonorable position of hopping on one foot, pulling his pants on one leg at a time.

 

"You know, I think your parents are actually staying at one of daddy's European hotels right now... Wonder if they would appreciate a post card?"

 

Jimmy's reptile brain froze him as he fumbled toward a pair of pants, and it must have frozen Gary too because for a moment there was dead silence in Harrington House. A flash of  lightning threw their shadows in stark relief on the bare wall.

 

"Or maybe a call? I might as well do that now, since you two are  _ indisposed  _ ..."

 

The sound of wet boots squeaked off down the hall.

Jimmy threw open the door just as a huge crack of thunder shook the building, drowning out the sound of Gary's cautioning yell. With a brief glance around to make sure no one was watching, he hooked a hand in the back of Gord's expensive-looking jacket and wrenched him backward into Gary's room.

Jimmy slammed the door shut using Gord as a battering ram, rattling it on its hinges. Gord was un-phased, dripping rainwater and smugness down Jimmy's trembling forearms. Gord’s eyes widened as he took in the sight of him. Then he threw back his head and  _ laughed  _ .

If Jimmy wasn’t already unnerved, he was almost undone as Gord’s laughter shook through both of their bodies.

 

“ _ Oh  _ , this is just delicious,” Gord said, finally. He wiped a bit of drool from the corner of his mouth, somehow still managing to appear aristocratic. “So nostalgic, in so many ways.”

 

He grinned down at Jimmy and plucked meaningfully at the fabric of his sweater, which Jimmy finally realized was stiff because it was covered in stains of  _ dried blood  _ . Gord grinned over his shoulder at Gary, whose face Jimmy couldn’t see--some inside joke between them that Jimmy was too addled to guess. Still locking eyes with Gary, Gord drifted his hand down Jimmy’s side, until it grazed the naked skin of his hip.

_ Pants.  _ In his terror and haste to not let Gord get away, he’d forgotten to put on  _ pants  _ .

Jimmy’s face bruised with anger and embarrassment, and he jostled Gord's shoulders harder into the door, sending Gary's boxing gloves bouncing against the side of Gord's head, who just hiccupped with laughter.

 

“Hands where I can see them, big guy,” Jimmy growled, trying desperately to maintain  _ some  _ control over the situation.

 

Jimmy could smell the stink of wine breath; Gord must have been drinking, at the party. He also wouldn’t stop smiling, which was giving Jimmy the major creeps.

 

“Relax,” Gord purred, smoothing his hands down Jimmy’s shoulders. “I’m not going to spill your little secret. Put me down.”

 

Unsure of what else to do, Jimmy did as he was told. After a quick inspection of his coat, Gord brushed past Jimmy and sat daintily on Gary’s bed, settling himself in. Jimmy tugged the bottom of the sweater down as far as it would go, wondering why it was covered in blood and why it seemed kind of familiar, but doubting this was the time to ask. It barely covered his junk, but it would have to do.

 

Gary, on the other hand, hadn’t moved a centimeter; only his eyes moved as they tracked Gord across the room. Jimmy couldn’t promise that Gary’d so much as blinked since Jimmy had hauled Gord in. Jimmy’s eyes bored into the side of Gary’s head, willing him to come up with something genius to get them out of this. At the moment, Jimmy couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t net him at least fifteen to life.

But Gary said nothing. Normally Jimmy felt like he could hear Gary thinking, could see the cogs turning in his head, but now it was silent, and he didn’t know if that was better or worse.

Gord cleared his throat passive-aggressively, and Jimmy turned his attention back to the problem at hand.

 

“Now, like I said, I have some conditions. Meet these, and no one has to know your filthy secrets.” Jimmy distinctly disliked the way Gord said  _ filthy  _ , but then again, he distinctly disliked quite a lot about Gord right now.

 

“One,” he said, counting his demands on his manicured fingers. “I want Mandy to go to the prom with me.”

 

Jimmy barked a laugh. “Yeah, right! Come on, Gord, you have to pick something  _ possible  _ . She’s already going with Ted Thompson--you know, her boyfriend?”

 

Gord paused as if to consider his words. Then lightly returned--“Oh, like you and Gary?”

 

Flush crept up Jimmy’s neck as he glowered. “Screw you, Gord,” he spat.

 

“No, I’m serious. You and Gary are  _ obviously  _ a thing, so you two must be going to prom together, no?” He gestured between them, his fake innocence a hideous affectation.

 

“Of course not,” Jimmy muttered.

 

Gord nodded sagely. “Of  _ course  _ not. So  _ that  _ means,” he said slowly, like he was talking to a kindergartener, “that people don’t  _ always  _ go to prom with their boyfriend. I want Mandy to go with me, and  _ you  _ are going to make that happen. Or else.”

 

Jimmy crossed his arms and glowered. Something about Gord’s request still didn’t smell right. “Why Mandy, anyway? I thought maybe you and Lola…?”

 

“ _ Lola  _ …” Gord spat, and for a moment his airy mood vanished. A miserable look passed over his face. It took a moment for him to collect himself, before he was carefree again. He passed a hand over his head, putting his hair and his confident attitude back into place.

 

“Lola has decided, after many months of deliberation, to go with Johnny after all.”

 

_ Bingo.  _ “Ohhh… I got it. You want her to get  _ jealous  _ .”

 

Gord’s eyes glittered mischievously. “Not bad, public school.”

 

Things were starting to fall into place. Gord  _ did  _ seem off-kilter in a way that wasn’t entirely alcohol-related. Jimmy would bet he’d been given the bad news earlier today, even, and was trying to drink off the heartache. Gord had always had a thing for Lola. A very stupid thing, considering Lola’s Jimmy-like commitment to non-monogamy. Jimmy almost felt bad for him--but then he remembered who he was dealing with, and why.

 

“I’ll talk to her,” Jimmy finally conceded. He had no idea how he was going to pull that off--Mandy and Ted had been planning on being prom king and queen since probably second grade. But… he’d just have to think of something.

 

“Condition two. I want an ivy league college recommendation, from Gary’s father.”

He felt Gary’s body stiffen, almost imperceptibly. Maybe it didn’t, maybe it was just Jimmy’s own body reacting in preemptive sympathy. Either way, Gord continued on oblivious.

 

“I don’t care how you do it, I just need it done. I know your father has sway in those circles. I just need a good letter from a man of his influence. Get him to include something about what a  _ fabulous  _ lawyer I’ll make one day.” He giggled to himself, some private, insidious joke.

 

A long moment passed in which Jimmy tried not to look at Gary and failed. Was it just his imagination, or had Gary turned a little green? Jimmy’s body yearned towards him, kept in check by fear and prudence…  _ although, you know what? Fuck it  _ . This was the one situation, the one person--aside from Petey, maybe--who Jimmy could afford to show affection in front of. Jimmy bumped his shoulder against Gary’s. Gary turned and looked down at him, his expression unreadable, then turned his gaze down to the blood-stained sweater.

And just like that, Jimmy remembered.

Shuffling zombie-like down an alleyway strewn with glass. Yelling at Gary in his dorm room, being yelled at by Gary. Gary proposing an arrangement, in which they would meet at the lighthouse once a week, to their mutual benefit… Gary cleaning his wound, mopping up Jimmy’s blood with one of his sweaters. Gary must have worn it home that day. Gary must have kept it, unwashed, folded at the bottom of his drawer. This stupid sweater, that Jimmy had almost completely forgotten… It was a totem of Gary’s feelings for him. A flame from a fire that had been burning for a long, long time.

It was worth it. Whatever Gord’s demands, whatever stupid, humiliating bullshit he would come out with next… Everything had been worth it. There was nothing Jimmy wouldn’t do to protect what they were, and what they had.

 

“Fine,” Gary said, finally, though he didn’t take his eyes off of Jimmy.

 

“Fine…?” Gord’s voice sounded somehow a little… lost. Like he hadn’t been expecting it to be that easy. Then a gleeful, tipsy grin spread over his face.

 

“Well that’s that, then. I’m glad to know you dirty commoners can actually come to a gentleman’s agreement.”

 

“That’s that?” Jimmy spat. “What about the third condition?”

 

“The third condition…” Gord seemed to be looking around the room, almost as if he hadn’t thought that far, and Jimmy winced at the idea that he might have just  _ reminded  _ him. Jimmy was starting to think that Gord was drunker than he looked, which was engendering a distant hope that there was still some way out of this, some way to play on his weaknesses that would put them on even ground.

 

Gord’s unfocused eyes settled on the place where Jimmy’s shoulder was still touching Gary. His eyebrows furrowed, and his eyes drifted further down Jimmy’s torso… and then he smiled again, that nauseating smile. Jimmy felt his stomach drop as Gord’s posture shifted, and he settled back against the wall, folding his hands comfortably over his stomach.

 

“The third condition, is that you two keep doing whatever it was you were doing before I walked in that door.”

  
  


**GARY**

  
  
  


Even as he heard Gord readjust on the bed, Gary's focus remained with the warmth at his shoulder. Jimmy was, somehow,  _ literally  _ dressed in another of Gary's secrets. Now that the knit of the sweater pulled across the barrel of Jimmy's wide chest, the dried blood stains seemed ...larger.  _ Were  _ they larger? (Had they  _ always  _ been so large??) He let his eyes slip across the blooms of rusty brown, tracing the peaks and valleys their stiff wrinkles produced in the cloth. There was a bigger agenda here, Smith realized. Gord's threats resonated, but the presence of the sweater had been loud enough to temporarily glue Gary's tongue to the roof of his mouth. He had managed to bark a garbled protest while jerking on a pair of scrubs as Jimmy flung open the door without pants on like a  _ complete imbecile  _ , but once it was too late for protests anymore, Gary had been startled into silence. Now, Smith's eyebrows drew together into a furious, tense line.  That sweater. That  _ stupid sweater  _ .

Jimmy was currently staring up at him with a look Gary assumed could only be Jimmy's rarely ever seen ' _ I noticed what you're hiding'  _ face. There was a quality of kindness to it Gary couldn't quite bring himself to like. In fact, wasn't there was a slice of  _ sympathy  _ in it too?  _ Ugh  _ . The taller boy found that it hit him all at once, like a cold block of ice straight to the gut. In another life, Gary would have compartmentalized the reaction and found a way to shift the blame back to Jimmy. Now, he recognized embarrassment for what it was. Out of all the clothes Jimmy could have ripped from his dresser, out of all the similarly folded vests and sleeves and undershirts, or dress shirts or polo shirts or even the casual printed tees he was occasionally gifted during charity events or over holidays that he never wore, why had Jimmy discovered  _ this  _ one? Gord coughed politely and Jimmy looked away again, but Smith's eyes remained locked to the redhead's figure. The invasion of privacy was acute. But then again, Gary had to silently remind himself, Jimmy had never really had to try very hard to produce the truth about things. He was usually on the nose, in a roundabout kind of way. It was one of his most unfair personality traits.

 

Gord's voice was smug and amused at once. "The  _ third  _ condition, is that you two keep doing  _ whatever it was  _ you were doing before I walked in that door."

 

In his throat, Jimmy made an appalled gurgle before jerking his questioning gaze back to Gary with the look of a stumbling cow. When Gary let his eyes finally meet Jimmy's again, it was with a grain of accusation, and less so but present nonetheless, with the slightest flicker of hurt. He cast a judgemental hand out to pluck at the sweater, swatting Jimmy's nose when he automatically looked down at the gesture. Was  _ nothing  _ sacred?

 

" _ Hey  _ !" Jimmy sputtered, grabbing the offending hand and jerking it away from his face.

 

"He can't be serious."

 

"Does he  _ look  _ like a fucking joke?" a thick red hand swept in Gord's general direction, and the prep on the bed pursed his lips and cocked his head to the side like an amused bird, waiting hopefully for a treat.

 

Gary made a disgusted noise somewhat resembling a laugh. In actuality, his grin came off far more dangerous than it was amused, jumping with equal threat between the other two boys. When he shifted his weight for a beat as Jimmy continued to stare at him, he slowly grew more appalled. The question that hung in the pregnant silence was overwhelming.

 

"Stop. No..! I'm  _ not  _ doing that."

 

Was Hopkins  _ serious  _ ? It took a moment to realize Jimmy's expression wasn't just mirroring Gary's internal conflict. He blinked at the redhead before looking back to Gord, then returning to Jimmy again.

Were they  _ actually  _ taking that infuriating fop Gord Vendome's third request  _ seriously  _ ? God, did the depraved, hedonistic gluttony of the Bullworth student body have  _ no limits? _ Conveniently, Smith chose not to include himself in this judgement. Not for this situation, this year, or any other crime he may or may not have committed in the distant (very distant) ((VERY distant)) past.

 

" _ Gary  _ ." Jimmy's voice warned. This was a real threat. And not just to their relationship, either.

 

But!  _ But, but, but  _ . Gary's mind filled with misgivings... With arguments and counterpoints. Which was the best to choose?

One thought muscled forward, stronger than all the rest. Gary had already given up so much of himself to maintain this relationship. His ego had been the first fatal mortality, the death of his vanity entirely sacrificed in order to make a place for Jimmy among his laundry list of other disorders. Ego  _ created  _ secrets. It was  _ made of  _ secrets. Gary had so few secrets left from Jimmy now. But what about pride? Without his pride, Gary would no longer be able to recognize anything about himself. And if he was proud of anything now, it was this most jealously guarded and precious secret. That Jimmy was his. That they were eachother's, and  _ no one else's. _

 

"No." He stubbornly shook his head. "No way."

 

"Gary, he  _ knows  _ ." Jimmy took a pleading step closer again, this time wrapping a warm palm soothingly around Gary's forearm. His thumb swept back and forth there in a comforting pattern, but it ultimately only served to produce another furious jolt somewhere in the vicinity of Gary's intestines.

 

Gary's eyes widened in anger at Jimmy, his nostrils sucking in twin snorts of angry breath. He gave the bloodstained sweater a last compulsory glance and jerked his head back to Gord, who appeared to already be taking huge pleasure in watching this silent struggle.

 

"Cat got your tongue? Well come on, then!" Gord chided, beyond smug. It was so similar to something Gary would have said in the reverse situation that Gary briefly had to let his eyes flick closed as he let the anger pass. Jimmy's hesitation was palpable against Gary's arm.

 

_ Think, Smith  _ . Think.  _ Think  _ !

When Jimmy's hand hesitantly went out to slide across Gary's stomach, sneaking beneath the hem of his shirt, Gary forced himself to allow it to happen. With his eyes still shut, he tried to imagine other times, other places. This could make the difference between graduation and expulsion, after all. Letting that hand wander meant their ultimate survival. It meant keeping Jimmy where he belonged, squarely on the throne, and Gary as the shadow cast at his side.  He grasped, now almost desperately, after the distant memory of Jimmy's hands slipping down his thighs in the red heat of the gym shower. He thought hard, harder, until it screwed his face into a pained frown, and Jimmy's familiar fingers hurt him now instead of the normal heat his touch usually brought. And then in a second, it was over. There was no way this could ever work. Gary grabbed Jimmy's wrist to halt it's path up his chest and opened his eyes again. He locked his gaze with Hopkins, unblinking, and minutely shook his head.

 

"I _ don't  _ share." Gary flatly pronounced, though whether to Jimmy or to Gord, the direction was unclear. Some lines were meant to never be crossed. Not unless you were prepared for something to break, and Gary had already received a lifetime serving of broken things.

 

Gord laughed in response, and the noise was jarring enough to break the rest of the spell. Thunder continued to rumble in tandem just outside the window, making the glass rattle in sympathy.

 

"What's funny?" Jimmy barked as he turned sharply away from Gary, wrenching his wrist free again with an excess of force.

 

"Oh, _you two_! Can't you _see_ it? It's just... Lord, it's just _too_ _good_." Vendome laughed harder, letting the noise swell, then taper off again into a pattering of amused and breathy giggles. One manicured hand raised to wipe at the corner of his right eye, and he punctuated the gesture with a final _hic_ of amusement. His cheeks had flushed pink with the sound, as well as what had to be champagne, the signal of genuine enjoyment plastering every inch of his relaxed figure. He casually crossed one ankle over the other and let his hand drop back to the mattress.  

 

"I'm just  _ tickled _ , you know. Oh,  _ calm down _ , Smith, don't look at me like that. You  _ know _ what this looks like from the outside, don't you? The  _ whole scandalous thing _ . I mean, really.  _ You _ ?" He gestured vaguely at Gary's overall countenance, "The psychotic ex mental patient with  _ no _ friends to speak of, so  _ bizarre _ that that even  _ dogs _ hate you! And then  _ you _ ," he pointed at Jimmy, "no doubt a  _ human _ dog, with  _ too many _ friends. Myself included, I like to think!  And yet,  _ none _ of those friends seemed to be able to help keep you from  _ still  _ getting conned by  _ this one _ so hard he threw you off the  _ school roof _ ! I mean, my  _ God _ , Hopkins, don't you see the  _ situational irony _ here?"

 

Jimmy's face screwed up in confusion. "The situ... what?"

 

"Oh for God's sake, stop pelting people with  _ spitballs  _ you ripped out of your  _ own  _ textbook during Galloway's lectures and pay attention once in a while!" Gord chastised with a flick of his wrist, in tandem with Gary covering his eyes with an exhausted hand. "I'm  _ saying  _ , the fact that you two are  _ porking  _ one another is absolutely the  _ worst  _ idea I've ever heard of! What if Smith is still playing a trick on you? Oh, it's marvelous."

 

"Of course he's not! Are you cra-"

 

"And what if Jimmy is just  _ curious  _ what a tumble in the hay with the  _ town crazy  _ might be like, hmm, Smith? Before he casts you off again and runs back to that industrial trailer park complex he positively  _ adores  _ spreading his seed around in? Slumming isn't an activity limited to  _ just  _ the rich, you know."

 

The edge of panic in Jimmy's voice grew sharper. " _ Stop  _ , we  _ already  _ -"

 

"That sad little Kowalski chap would take you in after your heart is broken though I think, Smith. That obviously assuming you actually  _ have  _ one of those. He's  _ quite  _ the baby bunny, wouldn't that be fun?"

 

There was a resounding silence, and Gary's color drained.

 

"He's always  _ talking, talking, talking  _ ." Gord pantomimed a chirping bird with his hand. "Or crying! I think you've hurt his feelings quite a bit! Both of you. Though of course, I don't _ presume  _ to make any judgements about the nature of your.. heh...  _ relationship  _ ."

 

Jimmy snorted at the exact moment Gary sputtered in disbelief.

 

"It's  _ quite common  _ among the wealthy class, you know!" Gord nodded from his full body recline as if he were reciting a lecture on a well known fact about the weather.  _ Wind blows. Rain is wet.  _ "Why, Pinky's aunt has six toes! Or was it four thumbs? Well, it's one or the other. I can't imagine you wouldn't have caught on by now. Siblings are just...hmm,    _ juicier  _ ? It's better to keep things in the family. To keep out...  _ unsavories  _ . And I  _ love  _ a good scandal, don't you know! But... and, really, I'm so  _ desperately  _ sorry about it, but you  _ know  _ how valuable a secret can be on campus. So the way I see things, I  _ really don't have any other choice  _ , old boys. I've basically  _ got  _ to blackmail you! Way of the world, and all that. No hard feelings!"

 

It was impossible to hear the tendons snap in Jimmy's tightening fists, but Gary was sure he could still feel it.

 

"That is," Vendome licked his lips and gave Jimmy's naked thighs a few extra penetrating seconds of attention. "unless there's something  _ else  _ ... hard... you might want to give?"

  
  
  


For a few blinding seconds, all Gary could process was hot whiteness. Somewhere behind him he heard Jimmy shout out in dismay, felt his large hands try to jerk him back, before Gary was impulsively sinking a hard elbow into that soft stomach and Jimmy fell away with a grunt of pain. And then Gord was in his grip, the sound of cracking glass loud in his ears. Gary had ripped him hard off the bed by the ankle, and then slammed him with every pound of the weight of his full body directly into the frame of his bedroom window.

The thunderstorm howled louder than ever suddenly in through the broken cracks in the disfigured glass, and Gord struggled with temporarily bewildered shock at the hands aggressively fisting his very fine cocktail jacket. Gord was the better boxer between them, by far. But Gary had been  _ practicing  _ recently, and no amount of revulsion towards physical contact was going to assuage  _ this  _ critically violent mood swing. Gord had insulted them in every capacity. No stone had been left unturned, and now Gary let his anger guide him. He could  _ never  _ give Gord any part of Jimmy Hopkins. Not anything beyond what he had obviously already sampled. But he  _ could  _ give him something else.

 

" _ Fight me!  _ " Smith demanded, jerking Gord up and slamming his back harder into the window. "You're always asking me to spar at the Glass Jaw, so  _ what about it  _ ? Just  _ you  _ and  _ me  _  . You want to humiliate us? You want to be superior?? Do it in  _ public  _ . Or aren't you  _ man  _ enough?"

 

Vendome coughed, and the noise hitched in his throat as a piece of glass dug into his spine. But the words registered nonetheless, and when he managed to glance with a grimace back at Gary's face, there was a  twinkle of interest there. Something bloodthirsty lingered, and maybe even more threatening, there was something intelligent. Gord's drive to be a lawyer was simply the cleanest path to exactly the kind of gentleman's savagery he kept barely hidden, just beneath his well tailored surface. He was exactly the sort of person who was thirsty for violence, but who wrapped his inclinations in Aquaberry cashmeres and silks.

 

"Ha!" Gord choked, still managing to smile even now. "The shady coward who  _ never fights his own battles  _ wants to have a  _ public  _ match? Goodness  _ me  _ , I never would have thought it!"

 

"Gary, let him go! He's bleeding! Stop it, man! Just  _ stop  _ !" Jimmy's fist was at Gary's shoulder again, pulling him back harder this time. Unsure how, and yet automatically doing it nonetheless, Gary let his fingers loosen as he allowed himself to be dragged away, until Jimmy's hot chest was a solid wall bracing against his spine. Gord was a pulpy, smirking willow reed righting himself from the window frame. Gary was breathing hard. He could feel the rise and fall of his chest against the heat of Jimmy's ribs. When had his breath grown so haggard? Firm hands slid around his chest, half soothing, half still imprisoning, protecting, containing. As the mood swing passed, Gary began to feel the trickle of cold sweat down his neck, and in a wet slick down his chest.

 

"Alright,  _ old boy  _ ." Vendome breathed, righting himself and tidying his jacket as best he could. "I'll take you up on your offer to get those squeaky clean hands filthy.  _ For once.  _ You know, Hopkins, I've always wanted to give this  _ faggot sociopath  _ a sound public thrashing. Especially after what he did to  _ you  _ . Maybe he'll finally  _ learn his place  _ . Obviously, it will be _ very  _ public, I think. I'll be in touch about  _ when  _ ."

 

The arms around Gary's chest vanished, and all Smith had the energy for was watching Jimmy's broad shoulders cut in front of him. "We'll get you your  _ date  _ and your  _ letter  _ , alright? So leave us alone already! Just get out of here, man!"

 

Gord sucked on his teeth and slid one bloody hand down his silk scarf, then tossed it primly back over one mussed shoulder with a carefully measured dignity.  One last sour smile was cast between them both, more than a promise in the sharp twinkle in his eye, and then with a flourish Vendome turned and quietly slipped out through the door.

  
  


The room was quiet, all but for the whistle of wind through jagged glass, and the soft hiss of rain.

Jimmy turned sharply when they were finally alone and singled Gary out, his face full of questions.

Though he knew he should feel sheepish, instead Gary felt tired. He paced back and forth a few restless steps, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. And then like his weight was merely a pawn of centripetal force, he circled back around and slung and arm heavily around Jimmy's neck to pull him close. He felt the other boy tense against him as he buried his face in Jimmy's throat, craning to press his mouth to the pulse he found there.

He sighed through his nose, more in dread and anticipation than anything else.

Jimmy would be furious. There was no way he couldn't be furious right now.

 

"Don't be mad." Gary mumbled, a hot gust against the freckles at his lips.

  
  


**JIMMY**

 

 

Jimmy was a pillar of trembling, anxious energy. He clenched and flexed under Gary's weight.

 

Don’t be mad. Well, he tried, he really tried, and he’d gotten so good at following Gary’s orders lately. He tried to embrace the waves of exhaustion rolling off Gary’s body, tried to force himself to calm down. The danger had passed.

 

But he could still feel the anger rising in him like a panic attack. It frightened him--the elemental force of feeling that could send him reeling violently out of control. It felt like his mother’s voice pleading, far away down a phone line. It rose in his throat like bile.

 

“Don’t tell me what to do,” he barked, and shoved Gary off him. Gary reeled backward, catching himself before he stumbled against the shards of the broken window. With the rain blowing in on them, the glinting of the glass against Gary’s back, it was suddenly an echo of another night--a simpler night, Jimmy thought bitterly.

 

“Why can’t anything ever be easy with you?” Jimmy demanded. “Why does everything always have to be a fight?”

 

Gary stretched out his fingers, placating. His voice was wary and low. “I’m not trying to fight, Jimmy,” he said slowly. “I’m actually doing the exact opposite of that.”

 

“Screw you, you know what I mean,” Jimmy spat, and it was his turn to pace. As he stalked across the room he felt the tickle of rain against his ankle, sending up another well of shame as he remembered he didn’t even have pants on. He whipped the sweater off his head and threw it to the floor with a vicious thwap. It felt more dignified to be fully naked, somehow--less like a child, wandering around in a hand-me-down shirt, left behind by some anonymous male “friend” of his mother.

 

“You can’t mean we should have… So what, you wanted me to just roll over and do what he said?” Gary spat, incredulously.

 

Jimmy’s eyes flashed, and he surged forward to grab the neck of Gary’s shirt.

 

“Yes! Yes I did!” Jimmy yelled into Gary’s stony, exhausted face, shaking him a little for punctuation. Rain misted between them, collecting in tiny drops on Gary’s eyelashes.

 

“I would have,” Jimmy said finally, and it came out so awful, so cracked. He turned away roughly and crossed the room, jabbing thumbs into his eyes to stave off stubborn tears. What was he saying?

 

He didn’t recognize himself sometimes, these days. He was so careful to avoid trouble, so heeding of every stupid rule; Crabblesnitch’s, his stepfather’s. He’d been going to class, going to approved social events, even running those bike races every week for the elder Smith’s prestige, like some kind of prize horse, all so they could stay under the radar and not get caught, not get separated.

 

The Jimmy who sent Gary plummeting through the skylight--the Jimmy who ruled Bullworth would have shattered Gord’s septum before he’d been able to squeeze out half a sentence. But being with Gary--loving Gary had changed him. He’d never sacrificed parts of himself like this before. And now, Gary… instead of sacrifice, Gary would choose oblivion. Gary would risk everything they had, up to and including his life, rather than debase himself.

 

I’ve always wanted to give that faggot sociopath a sound public thrashing, especially after what he did to you.

 

Jimmy wanted to grind Gord’s face into the earth, make him taste dirt and blood. He wanted to knock his teeth out one by one and feed them to him. Instead Gary would be fighting Gord--and although he was a good fighter, Gord had been boxing his entire life. Gord would beat him, publicly, violently. And there was nothing Jimmy could do about it, without people getting suspicious. He wouldn’t even be able be in Gary’s corner, he thought, his eyes threatening again to fill with frustrated tears.

 

Jimmy stared at the bloody sweater, lying twisted on the floor.

 

“You know the really messed up thing?” Jimmy said, half turning to Gary, cutting him a glassy-eyed glare. “I could take Gord,” he said, pointing a proud thumb at his chest. “It would be hard--I haven’t been practicing for a while, but I could do it. I used to be the best boxer in this freakin’ school.”

 

He crossed the gap between them and jabbed a finger into Gary’s chest.

 

“And I could mop the floor with you.”

 

Gary met his eyes, unblinking.

 

“Bring your gloves to the rail yard tomorrow after class. I wanna see where your training is at...”

 

Then he let out a long breath through his nose, and felt the anxiety of the night starting finally to fade. His finger softened on Gary’s chest, and his body begin to tremble slightly as his body unclenched.

 

“...and how much of you I’m gonna be scraping off the floor, after your fight.”

  
  
  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooooo boy guys, hello hello again! If this is taking a hard left from what you thought was gonna happen, look, don't worry about it. We're getting there! And in the meantime, please enjoy GORD! We really like GORD and want to write more GORD so, here we are, tra la la, GORDAPALOOZA. yes, he fits into the overall structure, and yes, we will continue to update! Friends and Bros goin on two years strong now, since it's initial conception! If you are STILL with us, I dont know what we owe you, something amazing, a medal or something. YOU DID IT! #confetti


	13. Trainyard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy trains Gary for his approaching boxing match with Gord. Petey faces the consequences of his actions.

 

**GARY**

  
  
  
  


The ground was littered with trash.  _ Typical _ , came that initial judgemental thought.  _ Jimmy WOULD suggest a dirty place like this. _ Like always, the acidic commentary in Gary’s mind flickered forward. This time however, it just so happened to recede quickly back again as Jimmy’s fist hit him squarely in the face.

 

Gary hit the gravel-packed dirt, going down hard and sliding back on one elbow with a hiss of pain. He came up short next to a half crushed soda can and an assortment of shredded paper, already dissolving, becoming dust and spreading out across the filthy yard. He looked up in a frothy fury.

 

“Way to go, werewolf!” Somewhere in the distance, Hal Esposito was heckling loudly in the sunny spring air. “My  _ gramma _ don’t even hit the floor like that, and she’s 300 pounds!”

 

“Shut the fuck up, Esposito, your gramma’s been dead for six years, she don’t hit nothin’ no more.”

 

“Yeah, but she went out a champion! Undefeated, just like her grandbaby!” The sound of Hal slapping his belly echoed, disproportionately loud to the yard.  

 

With a grunt, Gary sat up and leaned over his knees. He flinched as he felt the bloody skin around his elbow pull at itself and begin to trickle down his arm. The train yard was a washed out swathe of whites and yellows in the blinding midday sunlight, and when he looked back up, Jimmy was only a black pacing silhouette as Gary’s eyes readjusted.

 

“What did you do wrong?” Hopkins demanded of him without pause, direct and confident.

 

Jimmy was proving a harsh teacher, and though this wasn’t the first time Gary had landed on his ass because of him, he couldn’t stop himself from admiring Jimmy’s tenacity. Briefly, Gary paused to hate himself for that admiration, but by now he knew there was nothing he could do to un-feel it. It was too late. To be completely honest, it had been too late before Gary had ever even been at Happy Volts. Hopkins had  _ always _ been a brutally straightforward fighter. There was something undeniable about the effectiveness of that approach, no matter how good Smith was at lying to others, or to himself. 

 

“ _ What _ did you do wrong?” Jimmy demanded again, a red roving shadow, pacing around his grounded opponent like a tiger. 

 

Smith spat in anger over one shoulder, and the viscous liquid was tinged with blood.  “Why don’t you  _ tell me _ ?” 

 

Memories of the resonant ache of defeat perpetually haunted Gary while he had been in the asylum. Now that he was viewing Jimmy’s power from a different angle, these days it sometimes felt as if he was looking at himself from the reverse side of a mirror. What was Jimmy now, other than the negative of Gary’s own reflection? Jimmy leaned down to offer him a strong hand, and in what was probably the most blatant sign of the rejection of his former self, Smith allowed his hand to reach up and grip it, grunting as he rose back to his feet.  

 

“He’s a _bitch_ , that’s what’s wrong!” Hal offered again from the sidelines, drawing Gary’s mutinous glare. Lining the fence along the far end of the yard, posted up and cackling like crows on row of milk crates sat a cadre of greasers. Somewhat disconcertingly, each one looked jolly. Hal sat on the closest crate, popping jelly beans and grinning like a madman. Above him, Peanut leaned against the fence, unsettlingly smug, as if he’d figured out some private joke and was currently congratulating himself on a job well done. Further down the line, Johnny and Norton were leaning forward eagerly on their filthy, oil stained jeans, watching with the intensity of invested gamblers. After crossing _that_ thought, Gary briefly considered the likelihood of _legitimate_ bets having been placed on this match, and his eyebrows automatically furrowed together harder in a snotty frown.

 

Jimmy chucked Gary in the shoulder once to win back his attention. “Don’t look at them. What did you do wrong?”  

 

Feeling his lip curl up, Gary flexed his stiff fingers in anger as he took a step away from James. Gary’s hair was plastered back from his face with sweat, matching the stain running down his chest, as well as the back of his undershirt. He had been quickly stained all over with dirt and sweat and blood, an infuriatingly literal sign of his lingering inferiority. Not even his regular boxing lessons had prepared him for  _ this _ sparring session, despite the marked improvement he had been charting in his general boxing prowess.  In comparison, Hopkins appeared relatively clean and calm, despite even Gary’s point blank refusal to use gloves. So far, Gary had only managed to get a single good swing in, and Jimmy’s right cheekbone now swelled a faint pink.

 

“I thought you said this was supposed to be a  _ private _ lesson.” Smith grit through his teeth, leveling Jimmy with a frustrated look.

 

When Jimmy opened his mouth to reply, Peanut beat him to the chase, drawing both their gazes.

 

And was he… was that asshole _ laughing _ ??  “Hey hey, where exactly you think you’re  _ at _ , boyo?”

 

Peanut seemed to recline even harder, if that was even possible. 

 

Gary distinctly disliked the satisfaction in the voice of the clique’s second-in-command. What _ the hell  _ was he so smug about?  “I don’t  _ know _ , by the  _ current _ look of things I’m in a _ feral dog park _ ?”

 

“Yeah okay werewolf, you just go ahead and piss  _ alllll _ you want, But I got your  _ number,  _ you get me?”

 

The snarl that ripped across Gary’s mouth as he started forward was enough to make Jimmy’s hand suddenly shoot out to grip his arm, tight and unforgiving.

 

Unfortunately, it did very little to keep Smith’s mouth shut. “ _ You’re  _ next,  _ bootlicker _ !”

 

Confusingly, that statement seemed to only satisfy Peanut’s mysterious vendetta and he burst into a toothy grin. It was a look he exchanged briefly with Johnny Vincent, who just as mysteriously echoed that same smugness back at his favorite lieutenant.

 

There was another sharp tug on his arm as Jimmy cut loose a frustrated sigh. “Can you  _ shut the fuck up _ , guys? Gary, focus, man!  _ I’m _ not the one getting my ass kicked on Friday, remember?”

 

With a sharp intake of air through clenched teeth, Smith shot Peanut one last glare before turning back to Jimmy. Of course, there was nothing he could do about any of this. They were well past greaser territory and he was getting a lesson from their undisputed king. It made sense the greasers would have caught a whiff of the day’s agenda. But hard facts didn’t stop it from still being really,  _ really _ annoying. Though Gary wouldn’t dignify the notion of being embarrassed about it.

 

Having finally gained back Gary’s attention, Jimmy stood up a little straighter, his limber posture seemingly ready for anything. His shoulders gleamed beneath a light coat of sweat in a way Gary would have once found repulsive and now, inexplicably,  _ didn’t _ , instead appreciating with a lingering eye Jimmy’s  warm muscles as they slid easily against one another. Gary looked at him at first with reservations, then with a pinch of admiration, before shaking his arms out and turning to stand face to face again.

 

“I didn’t... “ Smith finally, carefully considered their most recent bout, recalling in a flash the step sequence, the shift in weight, the crunch of gravel beneath his feet that had landed him in the dirt again.  “You tricked me. You feinted right.”

 

Jimmy nodded approvingly, before assuming a guard position. “You don’t cover for shit on your left, you’re weak on that side. Watch me. See how I pull my elbow up to here?”

 

The quiet crunch of footsteps briefly distracted Gary as in the distance, silently as a cat, Petey rounded a faraway corner and slowly squatted down on his ankles at the base of the fence to watch. His presence presented itself as an odd little twist in Gary’s chest, before he turned his attention back to the position of his stance.

 

“Good! That’s way better. Let’s do it again, but see if you can copy me for next time around.”

 

“ _ If? Is that a challenge? _ Come on, Jimmy-boy, don’t patronize me.”

 

Jimmy laughed. “Like that’s not your M.O? Kiss my ass.”

 

“You wish!”

 

Jimmy swung, and just like that, the rest of the world vanished again. There was only Jimmy’s breath, and the constant current of his attention, glittering brightly with an intelligence Gary had never before been able to see. The truth of the matter was simply that  _ it had always been there _ , even when he had assured himself that Hopkinses stood on the lowest rung of all biological sentience, with toadstools and other slimy orange varieties of fungi. The fact that he had never allowed himself to see it was something Gary still pondered, especially when he was alone at night in his bedroom, patiently waiting for distant sleep to visit him. He was  _ always _ wondering now, about all the hundreds of seemingly crucial things in hindsight he had missed about Jimmy that first horrible time around. About how unacceptable it had been that he had failed to see so many defining traits for what they really were.  

 

Fists cutting through the air like hot metal through butter, Jimmy knocked Gary back, testing his boundaries and putting him on the defensive. Their feet scratched lines in the gravel as they pushed backward, and Gary watched himself as it happened again and Jimmy went in for the ribs through a crack in his guard but changed tactics at the last possible second. This time however, instead of aiming for Gary’s well-guarded left, he swept a heavy foot beneath Gary and pitched him forward, taking a quick step back as he smashed his chin hard into the disgusting gravel. There was a collective rise in appreciative yelling from the greasers as Gary made a frustrated noise loudly into the ground and angrily pushed himself back up again. He wiped blood from his chin with the back of his wrist, more furious than before.

 

“You  _ cheated _ !” he hissed.  

 

Jimmy grinned, almost seeming to sincerely enjoy the moment. He leaned down over Gary, not bothering to pick him up this time. “THAT was a trick. You think Gord won’t try to hit you with an illegal move? Don’t mess with me, man, I KNOW you know how to cheat. But chucking  _ a brick  _ at Gord’s head ain’t gonna cut it this time. Your style can’t fly at a Glass Jaw match. He’s gotta  _ at least pretend _ to play by the rules. But Gord is  _ Gord _ . You can bet your  _ ass _ he’s gonna at least try to get  _ one _ foul into play. It won’t cost him the match, so if he can, he’ll take the chance. And I’m betting Derby will play ref, so you need to take every advantage you can get.”

 

“Ain’t the psycho king of those rich inbreds?”  Norton intoned in a deep, curious voice, only to be collectively shushed.

 

Hal countered on a sharp note. “Shut your mouth, Jimmy’s the boss, asshole!”  

 

Gary glanced to Jimmy, who sucked his teeth and shrugged, letting the ambiguity hang in the air.  Feeling shame pool in his stomach, Gary rose to his feet again with renewed focus.

 

Hopkins met his energy pace for pace, and they faced off again with squared shoulders.

 

This time, the path illuminated itself. After careful internalization of Jimmy’s patterns, a technique was beginning to evolve. Gary couldn’t hear Johnny Vincent’s hum of approval as he poured all his focus into copying Jimmy’s aggressive form. Step for step, this time around Jimmy was on the defensive, but instead of going for a predictable clone of Jimmy’s leg swipe, Gary feinted an uppercut and instead came hard in from the left, slamming his fist into Jimmy’s ear. Hopkins staggered dramatically to the side and froze, barely steady and looking temporarily sick.

 

“... _ shit! _ ” Johnny Vincent mumbled, the only punctuated statement from a suddenly silent audience.

 

When Jimmy stood straight again, he shook off the ring in his ears and looked back at Gary with what was unmistakably pride. Smith saw it, and once again he wondered at Jimmy and all the things he had stupidly missed. What was this weird sensation? How had he ever known that having Jimmy’s sincere approval could feel like this? Nervous, his eyes shifted unconsciously back to Petey too as he sat against the distant fence. Petey wasn’t smiling like Jimmy was, but there was something set in his eyes that also made Gary feel strange. Had he won something, just now? What was it?

 

“Good work, asshole.” Jimmy congratulated. “You’re not entirely hopeless after all.”   

 

“I was never hopeless.” The automatic response came, bristling with pride, and yet somehow lacking that old arrogance which always seemed to ruin things.  Against the wall, Peanut smiled.  

 

“...Okay, let’s do it again.” Jimmy countered, and chatter in the yard refreshed anew.

 

It was going to be a long afternoon.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**JIMMY**

  
  


“Come on, get up. Let’s go again.”

 

Jimmy’s shadow cut long across Gary’s body, which lay supine in the railyard dirt. Jimmy rolled his neck and nudged into Gary’s side with one grubby sneaker, but his opponent lay stubbornly still. Jimmy let out a long sigh and crouched down beside him. Bruises were blooming across Gary’s pale jaw, up his hands and forearms.

 

Jimmy roughly fingered a bruise on Gary’s forearm, earning a grunt and a weak shove off. “I told you to bring gloves, but  _ nooo _ ,” Jimmy muttered, mostly to himself. “Gary Smith is  _ too cool  _ for that shit.”

 

He lifted his eyes to scan the fence, but the last of the greasers were finally gone. They’d peeled off one by one throughout the afternoon, no doubt called off to greater things, bigger wars. Jimmy suspected they were just disappointed that there hadn’t been more bloodshed. Not that he and Gary had been particularly  _ gentle  _ with each other, he thought, prodding his own swelling cheek… but it was a  _ training  _ session, not a fight. He’d  _ told  _ Johnny as much… but his friend had just looked at him with a long stare, like he was deciding whether or not to drag Jimmy off to Happy Volts, before telling him he’d be there. Like always.

 

“Okay fine, you asked for it,” Jimmy said, and sat down heavily on Gary’s chest. Gary let out a long revolted wheeze.

 

“So… fat…”

 

“Says the one  _ literally _ wheezing,” Jimmy laughed.

 

“Resorting to cheap,  _ fat _ tricks once your cronies aren’t around… I see your game now, Hopkins.”

 

“I dunno…” Jimmy mimed scratching his chin. “They served their purpose. Let’s just say their services are no longer required.”

 

Gary peeled open his less-swollen eye and fixed Jimmy with an accusatory glare.

 

“You _ brought _ them here? On purpose?”

 

Jimmy grinned down at him.

 

“ _ Maybe _ . Maybe I knew you’d need practice dealing with the head game,” he said, poking Gary’s forehead sharply.

 

Quick as lightning, Gary’s hand shot out to grab Jimmy’s wrist and held it in a vise. Jimmy blinked at him, astonished that he still had the energy reserves to move that fast.

 

_ That snake. He must have been holding back. _

 

_ Maybe he’s going to be okay after all. _

 

Gary moved his hand aside so they could make eye contact, but didn’t let go; instead, his fingers wrapped tighter around Jimmy’s pulse. Jimmy swallowed hard, feeling his face burning traitorously. When he spoke again his voice was quiet, and lacking its usual sardonic edge.

 

“If you think your fight with Gord is just going to be you two in an empty room, you got another thing coming. The Preps are gonna be there in full force with any other riffraff they can gather to root against you. They know you got pride, and they know you’re crazy as a shit-house rat. You got ego to spare, and they’re gonna try to use that against you.”

 

He brushed the hair back off of Gary’s forehead with his other hand as he spoke. There were no watchers now; no Greasers hungry for blood. Just the two of them. He continued,

 

“I thought, why not get another group of guys who hates your guts out here for a test run, see if you can let go of that ego a little bit?”

 

Gary considered him for a long moment, as if deciding whether or not to be angry with him. Then he snorted. “And how did I do?”

 

“Crappy,” Jimmy said with a shrug. “But... better than I was expecting.”

 

Gary released a deep sigh from some reserve deep in his chest and closed his eyes again, releasing Jimmy’s wrist and falling back into an exhausted heap--this time for real. Jimmy just watched him for a moment, willing his pulse to lower. It was so rare that he saw Gary like this. Even now that they were, well, whatever they were.  _ Together _ , the word hammered in his chest. He still barely saw Gary unguarded, outside of rare,  _ specific _ circumstances. His grubby undershirt rode halfway up his left hip, and the place between his eyebrows was smooth, untroubled, their exertions having momentarily taken his ability to worry or scheme away.

 

Jimmy wanted him, now, even bruised and bloody as they were--maybe  _ especially  _ bruised and bloody. But--Jimmy looked at his watch and cursed--he had another race in half an hour.

 

He hadn’t meant for them to fight this long. But he’d lost track of time somewhere, enjoying himself. He hadn’t boxed in so long--there was no time, with Smith Sr.’s rigorous prestige racing schedule--and getting to be Gary’s teacher for once was a thrill, though one he wouldn’t be admitting to any time soon.

 

Jimmy filed away “boxing” as just another in the infuriatingly long list of things that Gary made _better_. Though he still was no match for Jimmy in sheer strength or experience, that evil intelligence of his kept things interesting, and Jimmy had the sense that in no time at all he’d become a _real_ opponent. He regretted, not for the first or last time, the fact that the only time he’d really fought Gary was on the roof of the school. Gary had been no match for him then either, not without his weapons and tricks and cruel, calculated words. But Jimmy had felt _alive_ in that fight, in a way that that surpassed fighting anyone else--even Russell, or Biff. And that sense of _aliveness_ , that fire, had left him in the year he was on top of the school and Gary was in the asylum. He knew now the real reason he’d snuck into Happy Volts over and over again just to watch Gary, to “keep tabs” on him as he’d told himself at the time--he had been tending that fire. He understood that now. Now that fire, that aliveness, burned in him every day that he got to look at Gary, touch him, fight him, fuck him. All the anxiety, the anger, the stupid drama, the sneaking around bullshit--it was worth it for that clear-lunged, heart-pounding feeling he felt now, sitting on his chest in an empty trainyard. It didn’t make sense, but nothing in Jimmy’s life ever did.

 

And... yep, now he was snoring.

 

“Come on, Sleeping Beauty. Get up. I ain’t carrying you.”

 

No response.

 

He leaned in close. “I’ll suck your dick tonight if you don’t make me carry you.”

 

Nothing. Man he really was out, then.

 

Jimmy hauled himself to his feet, and was casting around the yard for something to help lever Gary up, when a pale figure crouching at the very edge of the fence caught his eye. Somehow his motionless colorlessness had blended in with the railyard dirt, causing Jimmy to overlook him. His stomach flipped (How much had he seen? Witnessed tenderness could be so much more damning even than sex) before he realized who it was, at which point he simply narrowed his eyes and spat.

 

_ Pete. _

 

Pete slowly rose to his feet, brushing the dirt off his Bullworth slacks. He didn’t break eye contact with Jimmy. He just nodded, and stood there, like he’d been waiting for Jimmy to see him this whole time.

 

_ That sad little Kowalski chap would take you in after your heart is broken though I think, Smith. _

 

Gord’s words echoed hollow in Jimmy’s mind as a new kind of coldness settled over his limbs, apart from the chilled wind of the descending spring night. Gord had planted a terrible seed in Jimmy’s subconscious, one that had been feeding on his anxiety all day, quietly, in the background of his thoughts. It had been no more than an implication, a nagging suspicion that Pete had something to do with Gord’s sudden knowledge of he and Gary’s relationship.

 

But looking at Pete now, the way he unhappily but steadfastly met Jimmy’s eyes from across the yard, Jimmy suddenly knew it was true. Pete had told Gord about them.

 

“Hey, Pete,” Jimmy called breezily as he began to cross the yard. His voice must have contained an edge, though, because he saw Pete wince as he said his name.

 

“H-hey, Jimmy,” Pete returned. The slight stammer betrayed his nervousness, but his face and posture had a kind of miserable finality to it, a set quality. Pete had come here for a reason. He’d endured the whole training session quietly, even after the others had left. He’d waited patiently as Jimmy and Gary had continued not to notice him, wrapped up as they were in each other.

 

“Whatcha doin?” Jimmy asked, nearing Pete now but not slowing, just pushing further into his space. A flicker of worry crossed Pete’s brow before he was taking tiny, cautious steps backward.

 

“Just watching,” he said. Pete’s hands fluttered at his sides, clearly wanting to drift upward into a conciliatory gesture, staying down through force of will. Jimmy didn’t stop until Pete’s spine was pressed up into the wood of the fence, splinters catching at his shirt like tiny fingers.

 

“Mmhmm,” Jimmy said, exhaling a long breath through his nose as his fingers came up to finger through the cheap fabric of Pete’s collar. His face was impassive, his eyes shuttered, as he quietly asked, “Is that what you like to do, Pete? Watch us?”

 

Pete’s eyes rolled backward in a tiny panic attack before he squeezed them closed and sighed, a line of sweat streaming down his temple.  _ He’s been preparing himself for this, _ Jimmy thought.  _ Cute. _

 

“Don’t be like this, Jimmy. It’s not like that, and you  _ know  _ it.”

 

“Then what  _ is it _ like, Pete?” Jimmy’s hands fisted in Pete’s collar and slammed him against the splintering fence. Pete was so light, and Jimmy’s anger so righteous, it was barely any exertion even for his exhausted arms. Pete’s skull cracked against the wood and stars crowded the edges of his vision. He was fighting to focus on the red, bullish face in front of him, but his eyes were rolling in disoriented terror.

 

“I  _ thought _ I knew how it was,” Jimmy continued, his fingers twisting in Pete’s collar in a way that suggested it was a poor substitution for wringing his neck. “I thought Pete Kowalski was my  _ friend _ . I thought he  _ kept  _ my secrets, instead of spilling them for the first pedigreed putz who looked his way.”

 

“It’s not like that--” Pete began.

 

“What did he offer you? Huh? I was  _ hoping _ I’d find you with some bruises or something at least, like he beat it out of you, but I can see your lily-white ass is as untouched as ever. So what was it, Pete? Money? Girls?”

 

And then Jimmy was drawing him close, and down, so that Pete was partially on his knees, scrabbling for purchase against Jimmy’s chest. Jimmy’s face loomed, thuggish and fearsome. His breath was foul and hot in Pete’s face, his pupils an endless black.

 

“Did he tell you he’d break us up? Is that it?” Jimmy was almost whispering now, his voice trembling with paranoia alongside the constant edge of condescension. “Was this your  _ big chance _ , Kowalski?”

 

Pete let out the tiniest sob, sending an awful spark through Jimmy’s veins. Everything hinged on Pete’s response, and he found himself praying darkly that Pete would confess, giving Jimmy the excuse to pulverize him. It had been so long since he’d had flesh under his hands just for hurting. As worried as he was for Gary’s fight, truthfully he envied him--he had a tangible enemy to fashion all his fear and frustration into, and a time and place to pummel him into the ground. Jimmy’s first language, his most natural communication, was through his body, and the myriad channels of violence and humiliation he knew how to inflict. He was  _ made  _ for this, forged in the crucibles of countless reform schools and a broken family that had been breaking and breaking across his entire life. Jimmy was a punisher, and Pete--lovesick, traitorous Pete--deserved punishment.

 

He realized dimly that Pete was trying to say something, his little voice coming in gasps around Jimmy’s fists. He lifted him up to his ear, and finally heard Pete’s mouth forming the words,

 

“Once a bully, always a bully.”

 

Jimmy felt a jolt run through him at the words, and he reflexively threw Pete to the ground. Pete just stared up at him. His eyes were sunken but unwavering as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, waiting for whatever retribution Jimmy would wreak. Jimmy stood stiff and expressionless as he listened to the phrase echoing in his mind, layered over Pete’s heavy breathing and the thundering of his own heart.

 

_ Once a bully, always a bully. _

 

Pete had answered his prayers; instead of an apology, instead of quivering and begging and blubbering for forgiveness, he’d answered with defiance. Jimmy basically  _ had  _ to beat his ass now. He had no way of backing down without it looking like he was chickening out.  _ Once a bully, always a bully _ … Jimmy’s fists tightened as he imagined bloody teeth darkening the gravel below him, of gathering a fistful of Pete’s hair and cranking his neck back, whispering into his pulped and purple face--“Don’t you  _ ever  _ forget it”--before leaving him in a broken, weeping heap. The satisfaction he could wring out of this traitor’s bones would be sublime.

 

“Come on then, hit me!” Pete was saying, and now the tears were streaming down his face. “Get it over with! I knew this is what would happen, it’s what  _ always  _ happens with you! It’s the only thing you know how to do, besides sneak around and screw people!”

 

Jimmy turned and began walking away.

 

“Come on!” Pete yelled hoarsely, hurling a handful of gravel to patter off of Jimmy’s back. “Quit being a  _ pussy _ !”

 

He picked his discarded bike up off the ground and righted the wheel.

 

“Wait!” Pete called, and there was a note of panic in his voice now as Jimmy began wheeling his bike out of the railyard. “Jimmy... where are you going? W-What about Gary?”

 

“Get him back to the dorms yourself, if you love him so much,” Jimmy said. With that he pedaled out of the railyard toward his next race.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**PETEY**

  
  
  


As Jimmy vanished in a cloud of dust around the furthest corner of the fence, Petey still felt a fist at his throat, as tight and punishing as the real thing. Angry tears forced themselves through his over-raw tear ducts, eyes swollen, and the delicate flesh Petey had so often been forced to scrub recently with an angry wrist now burned under that salty wetness. What could he do? What did Jimmy want him to do?? How had everything become so  _ monumentally _ screwed up? Had he lost everything  _ already _ , after finally getting his best friends back? Had Petey made a mistake that would see his delinquent companions finally sent away, this time  _ for good? _ The thought was too awful to contemplate, and in the dust of the yard, Petey let his head hang low as he listened to the wind. 

 

The distant clatter of a train groaning along it’s track sent metallic echoes bouncing around in the now painfully empty yard, and Pete felt the sting of loneliness now more than ever.  Jimmy’s face was a looming memory, still too close to shake. His fists. His voice. Even his  _ attitude _ . In so many ways, Jimmy’s behavior echoed someone else’s…. A different time, a different face. What was it about Gary that always seemed to…  _ infect _ people? Jimmy’s words, his righteous anger… it  was all a sick shadow of Gary’s terrible shape, and it slipped like an ice slick down into the pit of Petey’s stomach. How had that anger been directed at him? How had he let down his once proud and noble best friend so profoundly? But an accident would always be just an accident. Just like a bully would always be just a bully. And just like always, Pete knew that he was alone. 

 

....But, actually, Petey  _ wasn’t _ alone, was he? Not  _ quite.  _ Not _ literally.  _  In the bath of orange which painted the ground in evening hues, Petey turned to look at Gary’s prone figure. For a few long moments, Kowalski stood staring. 

 

Several feet away, Smith’s body laid totally immobile and washed in gold.  An odd thought struck Petey as he looked at the normally immaculate Gary Smith, who now appeared to be laying covered every inch over in a thick layer of blood and grime. Gary seemed... at peace. In DIRT.  In a sea of rubble, and decomposing garbage. He laid so utterly still, Petey thought, that he might have actually  _ died _ . 

 

Did one of Jimmy’s more vicious hooks catch Smith at just the right point against his skull? Didn’t people die from blunt force trauma all the time?? Bloody brain bruises, or something? An unexpected aneurism? 

 

It wasn’t the first time Pete wondered if Gary had gone and quietly died all on his own, without any preamble. That thought had occurred to Kowalski a jumble of other occasions, when Smith had spent those winter months fruitlessly trying to sleep his anguish away. Of course, Pete knew better now. He knew Gary had just crafted some new and uniquely bizarre habit of dealing with the stresses of his mental illness. But it had always been strange to see something like this back in the old days. Before any of the last year’s events had brought on so many changes. Gary had  _ never _ been able to lie still. He had practically been the  _ antithesis _ of “ _ still” _ .  Now, Petey thought, his stillness was uncomfortably commonplace.  

 

The only thing keeping Pete from solidifying the notion of his demise was that Gary would never allow himself to die alone in a dirty yard. No, when Gary shuffled off this mortal coil, he would be sure to leave something behind. Something egocentric and pompous to mark his descent into hell, a metaphorical tombstone that would proclaim ‘I WAS HERE, AND I WAS BETTER THAN YOU’. Human carnage would only be the beginning.  Gary’s death would decidedly be... grandiose.   

 

Now, no worry seemed to mar Gary’s resting face at the present moment. If anything, his limbs, over-exerted from long hours of practice, laid now with a kind of boneless relaxation Petey was unsure he even recognized as human. Consciously deciding to avoid any deeper thought about it, Petey finally let his feet pull him across the yard, drawing him closer. Like always, like an orbiting moon, like the magnetic pull of a migration, Pete once again moved in towards the center of his small world.

 

Gary’s eyes were closed when Petey squatted down in the dirt at his side. He watched his friend like that for a while, folded in on himself like a melancholy squirrel, before cutting loose the kind of small sigh that might have been mistaken for wind whistling through a hole in the roof from yards away. 

 

“...Whatever it is you have to say, just get it over with already.” Petey reluctantly broke the silence in a glum tone. “Your jokes can’t possibly be any worse than getting hit by Jimmy... Unless  _ you _ were gonna hit me too?” 

 

Gary’s long, raw fingers twitched against his stomach, though his eyes remained closed. There was a lengthy and pregnant pause.  

 

“....why would  _ I _ hit you when I could just... wait for  _ Jimmy _ to  _ finish you off for me _ ?” 

 

Of course.

_ Of course _ Gary was awake. Petey’s stomach sunk as he released that last bit of hope that his humiliation by Jimmy’s hands hadn’t actually been witnessed. So, had Gary then been awake the  _ whole _ time? What had he seen? What had he  _ heard _ ? 

 

Pete thought first of Beatrice, beautiful in the rain with a sprig of droplet-dappled wild flowers behind her ear. And then,  _ inevitably _ , his thoughts returned to Gary. Surely, Gary must have noticed Petey in the corner earlier... He must have heard his heart hammering in his chest as Jimmy’s thick fingers had caressed Gary’s forehead, pushed his sweaty bangs back from his battered face. Surely...  _ surely _ , Gary had heard Petey’s thoughts snarl impossibly together as Gary and Jimmy had breathed on one another, content to feel the heat as they whispered, pretending something else mattered other than that moment, or the pulse of affection which hung in the air between them. Pete sighed again, though this time it was a private noise he kept to himself, for no one else.

 

“I... guess you wouldn’t.” Kowalksi huffed sadly.

 

Gary shifted minutely in the gravel and cracked one eye open to peer sideways at his squatting companion, gaze glittering with curiosity. When he finally spoke again, the tone of voice he chose was closest to his former self. Returned now was the condescending and judgemental asshole of years gone by, though this time Gary spoke a hair quieter than he otherwise once might have. 

 

“Looks like  _ good old Jimmy-boy _ has got a  _ bone _ to pick with you. So  _ what’s the deal _ , little Petey? Let’s have it out, already.”

 

Silence.

 

Gary grunted at the lack of response, and rolled his leg to jostle Pete where he sat. 

 

“Hey. _ Hey. _ I’m  _ talking _ to you!”   

Still, Pete kept his silence. Though he did cock his head to the side to peer down and pick at one of his shoelaces.  

 

“...Is what Jimmy said  _ true _ ?” Finally came the dagger, slipping in slow to the core of the fight, tinged now with an old cruelty. “Do you... _ love me _ , Petey?”

 

Right shoelace pinched between his fingernails, Petey laughed. First with a doubtful noise, then with a mournful one. He let the sound taper off, then he looked down at the dirt again. 

 

“Is that why you pushed me into  _ traffic _ ?” Gary followed up, more incredulous than not. “... _ Jesus _ .” 

 

“It’s not-  _ I’m _ not….  _ like _ that. I like  _ girls _ , okay?” 

 

Gary opened both of his eyes and pushed himself up on his elbows to level Petey with a sharp look. When Petey noticed it, he did a double take, then let his gaze slip off to the side in tired exasperation.  

 

“I’m serious! It’s  _ different _ .” Kowalski countered. 

 

Knowing Gary wasn’t going to hit him at least for the moment made Pete bolder. He could  _ do this _ . Right? And anyway, this issue needed, in a  _ deathy serious way _ , to finally be put to bed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt  _ this tired  _ of a single subject. He wanted this done. Gary was  _ exhausting _ . Hadn’t they made any headway since Christmas? Couldn’t they talk now? Like, actually… really…  _ talk _ to each other? If anything had changed at all between them over the last year, it had been that. 

 

“What are you, God’s  _ gift _ or something?” Petey grudgingly mumbled. “Only Jimmy is interested in  _ that kind  _ of attention from you.”  

 

When Gary’s prone look of doubt didn’t change, Petey huffed once. He seemed to think hard about his next words before spitting them out, and Gary, surprisingly, decided to stay quiet and listen. 

 

“I’m not like Jimmy. I don’t want  _ everything _ . People aren’t some  _ smorgasbord _ .” For once, Petey rolled his own eyes. “And I’m not like  _ you _ either. Some freak…  _ whatever… _ not knowing  _ what _ you want, or if you even _ want it _ to start with.” 

 

Gary’s look grew sour. “For starters,  _ I’m  _ the one tha _ t  _ wants everything _.  _ I think that’s actually always been really,  _ really _ straightforward. But secondly, could you please then explain to me  _ what the fuck, _ Petey? Why did Jimmy just try to sand your spine off against the fence?” 

 

“Do I have to say?” 

 

“You  _ want _ me to kick you in the dick?” An old threat, but one that rung true.  

 

Sucking in a deep breath, Pete rolled back onto his tailbone and wrapped his arms around his knees. He met Gary’s glare. Gary’s face glowed gold as the sun crept towards the horizon, and heavy blue shadows dropped beneath his jaw to contour his collarbone, and to pool down beneath his neck. Only Gary’s scar stood out, framed from where his sweaty hair had been wracked back from his angular features, still just as feral a vibration to his eyes as when they had been as children.  Pete took him in, absorbed momentarily by older, painful memories. He knew then, that this was the end of the line. Internally, he tried to embrace a morbid sort of acceptance that this was it. All she wrote. The End.  The finale. Gary was about to kill him. This was the nail in the coffin. This was finally the moment it would all be over. The death knoll for a friendship which had never, ever really been actualized in the first place. Not  _ really _ . Not like it could have. 

 

“I told Gord.” The noise of the sentence was apologetic, though in a strange way, there was a certain relief in it too. “About... well, you know. It was an accident. Sorry.” 

 

Petey braced for impact, squeezing his eyes shut. For anger. For blood. For fists, shouting, kicking. For whispered threats or the hot sting of nails in his scalp, for his hair to come away and for tears to well up. Any second now, Gary’s revenge would visit swiftly upon him.

 

...But seconds went by, and then a minute…. And then, a hundred years.  And nothing happened. 

 

When Petey cracked his eyes open again, Gary was looking at him not with anger, but with confusion. He seemed genuinely puzzled, and the feeling instantly doubled back on Petey, who let his legs flop out in front of him as the emotion rode itself out. He blinked at Gary as the other boy cocked his head in questioning, then abruptly fell back again into the dirt. Gary’s eyes rolled up to the sky, and one more time his long fingers came up and folded in a lattice across his stomach. He didn’t speak for what Petey felt must have been an entire eon. 

 

Gary didn’t say anything. And then, he did. 

 

“...What do you WANT, Petey?”

 

Immediately, tears began to sting Petey’s eyes again at what was, by far and away, the kindest thing his cruel companion had ever bothered to ask him. 

 

The words produced themselves, without any preamble. 

 

“I just…. I just wanted you to say that we were _friends_. Just once!” Pete passed a frustrated hand across his face to wipe away excess liquid. “Not like a joke, and _not_ like an insult. For real friends! _Best_ friends. It’s okay if you’re lying to me, I just always…. Wanted to hear it. I’ve known you for _way_ _longer_ than Jimmy has.”

 

Gary’s face turned away, rolling into shadow. “...Jimmy’s different.” 

 

“I knew your mom! You  _ never _ gave me time. I gave  _ all _ of  _ mine _ to you, and all you did was throw me on the ground.  _ Again _ and  _ again. _ Why not me? Why him and not me? I just wanted to hear it! Just one time. Why did you  _ always _ have to-” 

 

“-Fine, we’re friends.”

 

The response came so quickly that Petey had to check himself. He looked down at Gary in silence, still just as confused. 

 

“...what?”

 

“W _ e’re friends _ .”

 

Another baffled pause. “...We are?”

 

“Yes. Friends. You and me.”

 

“Like… you and Jimmy?”

 

Gary scoffed into his own shoulder. “Jimmy’s  _ not _ my friend.”

 

“I thought you guys were serious!”

 

“Deathly serious.”

 

“Wait a minute, so…” Petey looked more turned around than ever. Awkwardly, he sat up straight again, then shuffled forward on his butt to lean in to try to catch a glance at Gary’s obscured face.  

 

“Are you..? No, uh, actually, sorry, what?” 

 

Gary rolled his skull back up towards the orange sky, and slid one decidedly scraped leg up to cross over the other as a thoughtful look washed over him. He sucked on the tip of his tongue as he considered the question. “You know when there’s a _really big_ thunderstorm? How it’s _exciting_ , and _loud_ , and _scary_ , and when it’s all over there are trees that have been _ripped up_ and cars that are all _smashed_ _apart_ and houses that have actually _moved,_ and _everything is different_?”

 

The silence following the question prompted Petey to grunt an affirmative. 

 

“Huh? I mean? uh-huh... I guess so?”

 

“ ...Jimmy’s like that.”

  
  


Was Gary losing it? How did this connect?? Pete leaned forward closer, squeezing his brain to understand, though he mostly felt incredulous.  “You like Jimmy like you like….  _ property damage _ ?” 

 

Gary’s voice lowered as he shot Petey a sour look out of the corner of his eye. “When did I say I  _ liked _ him?” 

 

“Well excuse me for trying to understand what the heck is up with you! I should have known not to ask. I mean, I already  _ know _ you  _ love _ him. Is that what you’re saying? It’s different because you  _ love _ Jimmy?”

 

At the flat pronouncement of that terrible ‘L’ word, Gary hissed through his teeth in disgust and looked away again. For a while he glared darkly into the invisible distance. 

 

“I  _ don’t _ like him. But I don’t… hate him anymore, either. Not exactly. It isn’t friendship. It’s something else.”

 

“By your standards, that’s basically like saying you want to get married.” 

 

Letting a grunt of frustration cut loose, Smith made a fist and punched Petey’s shoulder. The gesture wasn’t violent enough to hurt very badly, but it did shove Kowalski a little farther away. 

 

“Look, I can’t  _ explain _ it to you any  _ simpler _ than the storm metaphor,  _ okay _ ? That was cliffnotes for  _ morons _ . Either you _ get _ it, or you  _ don’t _ .” 

 

“Property damage,  _ right _ .” 

 

“No, it’s more than that! It’s  _ more _ than just Jimmy being some stupid, simple force of nature. It’s beyond him being an  _ insufferable pig person  _ who takes everything away. You get me here, Pete? It’s not just that he’s a  _ barbarian _ who  _ savages _ things like a  _ dog _ , or even that he’s an  _ idiot _ who would flunk out of school if he didn’t punch other  _ dorks _ like  _ you _ until they did his homework  _ for _ him. There’s something  _ much bigger _ going on here. Big picture. With  _ him _ .”

 

“Wow. Romantic.” 

 

“Shut up. I’m  _ sharing _ , like you  _ wanted _ , right? I’m  _ telling _ you what I’m  _ thinking _ . You wanna know what’s so  _ different _ about good old Jimmy-boy?” 

 

“Wait, so, am I shutting up or am I answering the question?” Petey countered aloud, starting to feel, without an immediate explanation, strangely...  _ lighter. _ “...Is this still about the storm?”

 

In a sudden spasm, Gary groaned and threw his arms up above his head. A brief, electric tremor reminiscent of the busy energy of his yesteryears plagued him with a momentary case of the jiggles, and then it was over. His arms came back down hard, slapping his stomach. Gary’s eyes went distant, and Petey knew the other boy was looking back through time… that Gary was looking at a much larger picture than the one Petey, in that moment, could only see a small portion of. 

 

“When I’m near Jimmy, I… feel... like I’m right about to touch a high voltage fence.”   

 

A dog barked in the distance as Pete’s eyebrows furrowed harder together. As he listened, Gary’s right hand raised to gesticulate the continued sentiment.

 

“Or, if I’m following through with my  _ storm metapho _ r?  Being near him makes me think I’m going to get  _ struck _ by  _ lightning _ .” 

 

“Sounds like love to me.” 

 

“...More like  _ electro shock therapy _ .” 

 

“Scary.”

  
  


Pursing his lips together, Gary suddenly turned towards Petey with a bitter frown, looking like he had something painful on the tip of his tongue.  The look instantly made something swell in Pete’s chest, and his heart ached at the sight of what was unspoken there. Gary didn’t  _ do ‘apologies’ _ .  After years of hoping otherwise, Kowalski had eventually come to terms with the fact that apologizing, for  _ anything _ ,  just wasn’t in Gary’s nature. So when he saw the threat of one on the horizon, Pete hurt. It hurt in the same way it had back when they were children together, torturing animals and hiding in the woods from their parents behind the Smith Mansion. Petey remembered the lump in his throat when Gary had forced him to swear to never to tell another soul about the things they did together. But back then, he had been so adamant. So  _ sure. _ Now, Gary hesitated for an uncharacteristic moment.

 

“- Pete, look, for a while I’ve wanted to-”

 

“ _ Stop! _ ” Gary physically flinched when Petey blurted his objection. 

“Sorry, just…  _ Don’t _ say it, okay?” He waved away the apology which, as long as Pete was concerned, could lie fallow for an eternity. “It’s _ way _ too weird. You’re, like...  _ really _ strange these days, Gary. You  _ know _ that, right? You don’t have to say it. It’s definitely not you. In fact? ...Don’t ever say it!”

 

For one more long beat in the dying light, Gary looked at Peter Kowalski with that same distant look. And just as abruptly as Jimmy’s exit, he briskly sat up. 

 

“Say  _ what _ ?” Gary asked coldly, then rolled to his feet again in a single fluid motion. 

 

Once standing up again, Smith occupied himself with dusting as much dirt off the front of his shirt as he could, making a repulsed expression as he suddenly seemed to notice how filthy he actually was. When no stain proved movable, Gary groaned low in his chest, and ran his fingers once though his greasy hair. 

 

“Come on, little Petey, let’s go back to school. This place is disgusting. You wait here any longer anyway and Hopkins will come back and  _ kick _ your  _ ass  _ again. Unless… that’s what you  _ want _ ?”

 

The space between the moment where Pete was frowning and Pete was smiling was less than a heartbeat. Scrambling after his friend, Kowalski jogged a few steps to fall in line with Gary, suddenly everything about his posture more casual, more at ease. “I mean, he didn’t exactly  _ kick my ass _ ....” 

 

“He didn’t?” Gary laughed over the sound of their shoes shuffling through rubble. “Funny, because it  _ sounded _ like he did.”

 

“Come on Gary, you’re not telepathic.” 

 

“ _ Oh yeah? Actually, _ I think I  _ am. _ Because  _ something _ tells me you’re gonna be my errand bitch for the next  _ six hundred years _ after what you did _. I’m not wrong, am I? _ ” 

 

The sun slipped beneath the horizon, orange turning to gold turning to red turning to purple turning to blue.  And then it was dark.    

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beep boop. Hello again dear readers! There's something really delicious about Gary being forced to listen to somebody else for a change. Jimmy should punch him more often! Feelings are burning hot in this sweaty chapter where everyone gets punched in the heart, especially Petey, though Jimmy might give him a run for his money. Who is really in the right, here? And, what's this? My spider senses are telling me something... could a GORD POV chapter possibly be on the horizon??? All good things come to those who wait. Until next time, you filthy rabble rowsers ;)

**Author's Note:**

> Gary = BetweenTownleys, Jimmy = squidnapped
> 
> check out the fanmix -> http://8tracks.com/hydronaut/damaged-goods
> 
> ahhh we hope you like reading this as much as we like writing it! we've taken some liberties in designing their families and family relationships, particularly gary's, but everything is plausibly canon. ummm yeah!


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